The Hell Hound Journals

The Forest of Dreams:

In the distance, three animals grazed peacefully. Their heads were down, chewing away at the clover. One of them had a rack of antlers, six sharp points aimed at the sky. The other two only had fuzzy ears, which twitched as they ate. I'm told that the antlers indicate that it was a male and two females, a buck and two does. They had reddish brown coats, with auburn highlights. White tails flicked at some bothersome flies. It was a calming sight.

Suddenly, one of the female deer lifted her head. She was looking in our direction. In a burst of movement, she turned and started running away. The other two didn't hesitate, they quickly followed her. I jumped to my feet, starting into a run, chasing the deer.

"Broken Oath!" Manestus yelled, surging to his feet. He began running by my side.

The three animals moved effortlessly across the meadow. They were far faster than I could ever hope to run. They had our scent. I was giving chase, but there was no real chance of catching them.

"This is pointless, Rebecca," Manestus said, as he ran.

"We've been stalking them for two hours," I responded, "I can't just let them go."

Manestus wasn't really dressed for hunting. He was wearing black leather from head to toe. It was an old-fashioned riding outfit, with bronze buckles and tassels. To be honest, I've never seen him wear anything else. It went well with his long gray hair which was flowing behind him as he ran. He's of average height for his kind, which puts him a bit shorter than me. The thing that really stood out about Manestus was his eyes. They were large and green, with pupils that were slit like a cat.

Manestus wasn't human. He was fey. A member of the wild host, from what he tells me. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Yes, I was hunting side by side with a mythological creature. It was fitting, considering our surroundings.

The meadow was surrounded by old growth forest. It was the sort of place that had never seen a chainsaw or a logging truck. There were oaks, maples, pine trees and other plants that I was familiar with from home, along with a few that I've never seen before. Massive trees reached high into the sky while below them saplings competed with thick bushes and patches of moss deep enough to reach up to my knees. In the distance, I could see streams, ponds, meadows and rocky outcrops creating breaks in the forest canopy. The ground was covered by a spongy combination of fallen leaves, dead wood, little plants, and thick black soil. It was the sort of place that environmentalists had wet dreams about, a forest cathedral, untouched by man.

For all of its beauty, the forest wasn't natural. Everything was tinged with a hint of red from the light shining down from above. The sky was a mass of scarlet clouds. I'm not talking about the pretty clouds you get from a sunrise or sunset. These were thick, heavy, and overcast clouds that glowed as if a red sun was shining through them. There wasn't a single patch of clear sky.

We were in the Forest of Dreams. It's a fey realm, distant and displaced from Earth. Now, I know what you're thinking, you've read a lot of fairy tales, and you've never heard of the Forest of Dreams. Well, that's where you're wrong. You have heard of it. Do you remember the Brother's Grim and how many of their stories involve traveling into a dark forest? How about the Mirkwood from Norse mythology? Yeah, it's different regions of the same place. Apparently, the locals call it the Forest of Dreams. I haven't met them yet, but I'm keen not to piss them off by using the wrong name for their home.

"Damnit! This sucks!" I yelled, continuing to pursue the fleeing deer.

There is nothing more frustrating than watching your prey get away. That's why I was chasing them. The choices were to stand still and watch them get away, or to chase after them pointlessly while they got away. It was a little less frustrating if you chased after them. Besides, it felt good to run. Slowly crouching and crawling your way across a clearing is hot and sweaty work. The run was cooling me off.

At that point, the deer reached a ridgeline. It was a patch of bare rock that split the terrain. They couldn't keep running straight, needing to turn to the right or left. To the right was open fields and flat terrain, a perfect place for them to leave us far behind. They turned left.

"They're going down into the gorge!" Manestus exclaimed.

"If we take the ridgeline..." I began, pausing for breath.

"...then we can cut them off," he said, finishing my sentence for me.

The gorge meandered around beneath the ridgeline, which was relatively flat on top. The distance travelled through the gorge could be covered faster along the top of the ridge. If we climbed the ridge, and ran fast enough, there was a chance of catching them. There was no time to celebrate. We ran, hard. I transitioned from a casual loping run into a flat-out sprint aimed at the waiting rocks.

You're probably wondering how I got myself into this situation. Here I am, a girl in her early twenties, running around a fey dimension trying to catch supper. I should be in university or a trade school, maybe even working a minimum wage job if I couldn't afford an education. How the heck did I get here? Trust me, I ask myself the same question on a daily basis.

It's a bit of a long story and I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say that I did something stupid, and a little bit heroic. Now, I'm paying the price. I'm stuck here, trying to survive. The winter king is an asshole.

The slope leading up to the ridgeline was broken rock and boulders, impassable terrain for deer, but an easy climb for humans. I slowed down a bit before hitting the rocks and used my forward momentum to jump up onto a boulder. From there I scrambled up the slope, jumping from perch to perch. I used the base of my spear to help push my way up the slope and used my free hand to pull myself along. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. I reached the ridgeline in record time.

Looking down, I could see that Manestus was having trouble. His type of fey clearly didn't have enough mountain goat ancestors, because he was getting nowhere fast. He was still stuck near the bottom of the slope trying to find a path up. He looked at me and waved his hand towards the ridgeline. With that gesture he was telling me to go, leave him behind. I turned my back on him without a moment's hesitation and started running. He would need to catch up.

The first challenge for survival in the realms of the fey is food. There are no grocery stores, and even if there was, I don't have anything that the fey consider to be money. I could have gone into debt to the winter king, which was probably his intent, but going into debt to the fey is an unbelievably bad idea. My only advantage was the debt owed to me by Manestus for freeing him from his captivity. He's paying me back by helping me survive. At the moment, that takes the form of helping me hunt.

Rabbit and deer are my primary prey. The rabbits are easy to catch. They don't know what a spear is, and don't run away when one is aimed at them. There isn't much meat on rabbits though, so I prefer hunting deer. To be honest, I was getting fairly good at killing Bambi and Thumper. It was a disturbing skill set to be learning, but probably better than whatever the winter king intended for me.

I ran as fast as I could along the ridgeline. This was the hard part. I couldn't pace myself. If I didn't give it everything then the deer would get away. They were so much faster than I was that if I slowed down, even slightly, then they would get out of the gorge before I could clear the ridgeline. So, I ran, hard.

The wind of my passage pulled at my clothing, cooling my body and whipping my hair out behind me. I was glad to be traveling light. All I was carrying was the small bag on my back, the knife on my belt, and my spear. The spear was four feet of hardwood polished black with beeswax and charcoal. It was tipped with a long, leaf shaped bronze blade. I could throw it nearly a hundred yards, half that if I was actually trying to hit something.

My lungs burned. My legs ached. I was hitting the wall. It was an expression we used when I was playing soccer in university. It was the point during prolonged running when you exceeded what your body was willing to give. It took an act of willpower to keep going. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to keep running despite the pain. That was when it happened, when I noticed there was something supernatural about this hunt.

Yes, I realise that sounds silly. I was hunting in a magical fey dimension where the sky was always blood red, and only now was I noticing that something was supernatural? What I mean is that something unexpected was happening and there was no easy way of explaining it.

When you hit the wall, you are running on willpower, going beyond what your body wants to give. You use your focus and determination to ignore the pain and keep going. There is nothing supernatural about that. Professional athletes do it all the time. No matter who you are though, you start to slow down after hitting the wall. No matter how much willpower you have, your body can't keep going forever. It's simple biology.

This time was different. I pushed through the pain, and it vanished. My lungs stopped burning. My legs stopped aching. Even my feet, which were pounding the ground in deerskin boots, stopped hurting.

The pain simply vanished, replaced by a sensation of energy surging into my body. I pushed harder and started to accelerate. I should have been slowing down, forced by biology and the limits of the human body to decrease my speed. Instead, I was sprinting faster than I've ever run in my life. I wasn't getting tired. I was feeling more refreshed and full of energy with every step. I probably should have stopped, tried to figure out what was going on, but between the adrenaline high and the thrill of the hunt, I kept running.

The forces of nature, or whatever else shaped the ridgeline, left a chasm in the middle. It was a ten-foot-wide gash through the center of the raised ground that was forty feet deep and I was heading straight at it. A fallen tree lying across the gap allowed easy access over the chasm, or at least it normally did. As I approached, I could see that the tree was no longer there. My bridge was gone. My route across the chasm had disappeared. Without the fallen tree to use as a bridge, I wouldn't be able to catch the deer. They were going to get away. Sighing in frustration, I started to slow down. At that point, I had an idea. It was a crazy idea. I didn't stop to think it through.

Without breaking my stride, I pulled my arm back and tossed my spear, aiming for the other side of the chasm. It stuck into soft ground a few feet past the gap. Then, I sprinted straight at the chasm. A little voice inside my head told me I was being reckless and stupid. It was drowned out by the thrill I was feeling at the energy pouring through my body.

I hit the edge of the gap and threw myself into the air, diving with my arms extended. It wasn't an expert jump, but it didn't need to be. I landed on the opposite side with room to spare. Working entirely on instinct, I tucked a shoulder, using my momentum to roll up onto my feet. I was back at a sprint moments later, grabbing my spear as I went by.

After the chasm, the ridgeline sloped downwards. I picked up even more speed by sprinting downhill. I was over halfway there, and I was moving fast enough that I was going to be able to catch the deer.

It should have been impossible. The chasm should have stopped me. Without the fallen tree, I should have been stuck on the other side. It wasn't just the jump over the chasm. I was moving as fast as an Olympic sprinter, but even they couldn't keep running indefinitely. I should have been exhausted, but I wasn't. I shouldn't have been able to run at the speed I was moving, but I was. Something supernatural was happening.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't stop to think about it. Whatever was happening was helping me catch the deer. I could figure it out once the hunt was over. I was not going to let my prey escape.

Unlike the bare rocks at the beginning of the ridgeline, the far end was a gentle slope. The forest grew right up the slope. I started running between trees, making slight changes in my course to avoid hitting them. There was a rhythm you needed when you were running in a forest. The undergrowth and branches forced you to think several strides ahead. It was a negotiation with the forest. You couldn't dictate your path, but at the same time you had to assert yourself through the greenery. Screw it up, and you end up tripping or smacking your head with a heavy branch. If you are good at it, like I am, then you can run flat out through the undergrowth without needing to slow down.

I used my hands just as much as my feet while running through the trees. I brushed branches out of the way. I vaulted over fallen logs. It felt odd, and probably looked even worse, but it worked. My newfound speed and endurance didn't throw me off my rhythm. In fact, it almost seemed to help. Before I knew it, I was approaching the mouth of the gorge. The sound of large bodies passing through the undergrowth announced the arrival of the deer. I made it on time.

There's something I've noticed about hunting. Sometimes a hunt takes hours, other times it only takes a few minutes, but when a hunt ends, it always ends suddenly. I burst through the trees less than a dozen yards away from the deer, catching them by surprise. They were running along a game trail, and my approach was taking me straight at them. Our combined closing speed was incredibly fast. The two female deer instinctively shied away from me, off the trail. The buck turned towards me and lowered his antlers. There wasn't enough time to avoid the buck and go after a doe. I had my target.

I sidestepped, moving towards his flank. He tried to follow me with his antlers, but the angle was wrong and he misjudged how fast I was moving. Slipping past his antlers, I thrust with my spear.

The collision was brutal. I didn't realise how fast I was moving. My intention was to slip past his antlers, hit him in the side with my spear, and then slide past behind him. Instead, I slammed into his flank, leading with the spear. I spun off to the side, losing my grip on my weapon as my feet slid out from under me. I tried to turn the fall into a controlled roll, but it was hopeless. My body still had too much momentum. I ended up spinning off into the bushes, tumbling across the ground. Eventually, my uncontrolled course bashed me into a tree, knocking the breath out of me. Damn, I was moving fast.

I flopped around on the ground, trying to fill my lungs. If you've ever had the breath knocked out of you then you understand how much it sucks. My lungs were screaming for air, but my diaphragm was paralysed due to the shock of my impact with the tree. I couldn't breathe. Saying that it was uncomfortable was an understatement. Eventually, sweet air filled my lungs. I stayed on the ground, lying still, rejoicing in the act of breathing.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't just lie there. I hit the buck with my spear, which meant that there was an injured and probably dying deer out there. Contrary to what you've seen in movies, dying animals don't conveniently lie down and wait for the hunter to finish them off. They run away. This means that you have to follow them, sometimes for hours. There are times, if you don't follow them quickly enough, that you lose the trail and never find the body. That's pretty much a negative outcome for everyone involved.

I climbed unsteadily to my feet and drew my belt knife. I seemed to be uninjured, other than having the wind knocked out of me. I started the process of looking for a blood trail.

My search turned out to be academic. The buck didn't go far. It was lying on the ground, a few strides away from where I hit it. My spear took the animal in the ribs, punched through the chest, and was sticking out the other side. The shock and trauma from a brutal wound like that probably killed him instantly.

The forest was quiet. The violence of my encounter with the deer must have scared off the local birds and insects. The wind wasn't blowing either. Silence reigned amongst the trees. The sudden calm gave me a moment to think.

The first thing that came to mind was that I shouldn't have been able to stay silent. I should have been panting and wheezing after that run. I was going at a full sprint for a good fifteen minutes, but I didn't feel tired. Even a professional athlete would have been huffing and puffing. Somehow, I tapped into some sort of power. It made me faster, it granted me stamina, and apparently it made me stronger too. The worst part was that I didn't know what was going on.

"Broken Oath!", the silence was broken by Manestus' voice coming from the ridgeline.

His words brought a smile to my lips. In my minds eye, I could see him standing at the far end of the chasm swearing because the fallen tree we used as a bridge was gone. The mental image of him gave me a warm feeling that helped calm my nerves. Thinking of him would make what I had to do next easier. The hunt was successful, and supernatural events aside, I still had one more task to complete before it was over.

If I wanted to eat venison tonight, then there was a ritual to perform. I needed to give thanks to the deer for the sacrifice it made. Granted, it didn't have any say in the sacrifice, but I needed to give thanks, nonetheless. I did this ritual every time. It was part of the hunt.

I slipped my bag off my shoulders, searching around inside for my cup. Of all the possessions that I brought with me into the land of the fey, my little backpack held up the best. I used it to carry around a few odds and ends while I was in the forest. The cup wasn't anything special, about the size of a teacup but without the handle, made out of beaten silver. I'd like to tell you that it served a mystical and magical purpose in the ritual, but it didn't. It was just a container that was convenient to drink out of.

With a quick cut from my bronze knife, I sliced into the buck's neck. I kept the knife razor-sharp, which made it easy to cut through the deer's skin. The animal's heart wasn't beating, so the blood poured slowly, but that wasn't a problem. I didn't need much. Once the cup was half-full, I had what I needed. From under my halter-top, I pulled out the pendant that Manestus gave me when he first taught me the ritual. I dropped the pendant into the cup of blood. I didn't bother taking it off first. The necklace it hung from was long enough that it could stay around my neck during the ritual.

"Thank you for your sacrifice. I honour you and the Forest of Dreams. In death, your body shall nourish mine," I said to the dead deer.

The specific words didn't seem to matter, or at least I've never received any complaints. I finished the ritual by drinking the blood, allowing the pendant to fall into my mouth. A surge of energy rocked me as I swallowed the thick coppery liquid. My vision became blurry. The energy burned through me. I couldn't hear anything other than the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears as every nerve ending in my body seemed to fire simultaneously. It wasn't painful, just intense. When it stopped, I found myself on my knees with the cup on the ground in front of me. My throat was sore from the primal scream that ripped its way out of my chest.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. She's wondering where the supernatural speed, strength, and stamina are coming from even though she's been performing a magic ritual for the past three months. The two things couldn't possibly be connected, could they? Granted, when it was put that way, it did seem a little obvious. The ritual of thanks, for lack of a better name, was somehow affecting my hunts. The energy surge it gave me when I drank the blood was making me faster and stronger when I hunted. So, maybe it wasn't unexplained, but it certainly was supernatural and unexpected.