Halloween I.F. – “Going Dark” – Day 27

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Left, Fern decided. Both options were emotional, and both had potential practical reasons but this one had… a lot going into it. 

If it was a case where they potentially had to pick one over the other… they owed Bannick and Aris more. If those two had prioritized trying to please their master instead of hearing Fern out,… they could have captured Fern, brought them here tied and bound with no recourse about it. Bannick, at least, hadn’t been warded against at all through most of this, and had been released quite early. 

Besides, they were people Fern had shared a meal with, had imagined some kind of future with—whatever form that took.

And if they didn’t go now, those spirits might be used against them or Miranda, or harmed to make a point; who knew what Madoc might do? Fern doubted he would be particularly pleased with either Aris or Bannick at this point.

Of course, Fern didn’t want anything to happen to Miranda, and that was the risk… but Miranda was seeking vengeance in her own right. While she could surely use the support, Fern had to make their own decisions in the moment, and Miranda wasn’t exactly waiting for them.

They’d never been the praying sort, but they thought in her direction, please, please be well, and then took off to the left.

The path split off several times. Under normal circumstances, this would be a problem, but…

One of the paths, each time, was wrapped round with roots, like a huge tree had built its supporting structure fully around the passage. The roots did not look well, however. The whole area stank of musty, earthy punk, the ground began to squelch underfoot the further they went. As they passed their lantern over the area, it glittered oddly back. 

Very, very carefully, Fern reached out to touch one of the glittery spots and jerked their hand back quickly when they felt a sting, fumbling their equipment around to look at what had happened.

A small mirror splinter was sticking out of their finger. Hissing involuntarily at the sight, they put the lantern down so they could tuck the flashlight under their chin and carefully tug it out.

Finger throbbing, they dropped the shard to the ground, fetched the lantern again, and continued onward, this time shying away from the rotting roots and their strange sharp thorns. They didn’t feel particularly well about an injury in this place, but this was as big a case of no fucking helping that as Fern could think of. They tried to put it out of mind. Hard when it throbbed like that.

A few twists and turns and false paths later, the path opened again into a room. This had definitely been some kind of work room before—the sort of thing that Fern would think of as a crafting room or a tool room or something like that, but for magical purposes.

This was no longer the case, not with what had happened to it. Lashing roots had torn down bookshelves, smashed vials, destroyed another desk, tore up the floor panelling that had clearly been added at some point, once elegant, decorated in now-ruined gold gilt. Everywhere was a ruin of shattered glass, broken stone, crystals, torn tapestries. The whole room reeked of rot, and Fern gagged, pulling their hoodie up a little higher to cover their nose.And throughout it all were lashing, writhing roots, the whole thing giving a sense of death, corruption, something worse.

An uncanny glow came from the centre of the room. Yeah, that’s where they’d have to go, huh? The fucked up weird thing they should by all rights be avoiding. Fern groaned softly to themself, and began to very carefully pick their way through, trying to avoid touching the roots—near impossible—or falling on any of the glass or other sharp edges. 

Slowly, they made their way forward, pushing themself over a fallen bookcase, under a tilted bench, until they could see what was there.

At the very centre was a horrible, scrawny little brown thing that Fern thought, in immediate panic, was a cockroach, but realized shortly after couldn’t be, not with all the roots coming out of it. When Aris had said a bud, they’d imagined a flower bud, rounded, leaf-like, full of vitality.

But of course, Aris hadn’t been trapped in a flower or anything similar. Aris had been trapped in a pine tree. Fern imagined those weird growths at the end of pine branches fresh and green, but if they really thought about it, they knew that they grew brown and sort of hairy over time. 

It’d make sense. It looked like Aris’s freedom had been frantically searching for its own way out, rotting and unused, destroying everything in its captivity. Fern drew a slow breath at the thought of it, then regretted it as they inhaled the scent of plant rot again.

The bud wasn’t alone, though. Beneath it had been a framed mirror, but barely any of that survived anymore. The glass had cracked as the roots wound around it, possessive or furious or simply searching for anything it could to hold onto — surely the source of the glass shards throughout it. The frame had been torn apart, and while the backing was in one piece, Fern could see a piece of old, yellowed paper that had once been hidden between the mirror glass and the backing. 

They drew closer still, reaching for that, then yanked their hand back at once. A heat emanated from it, like Fern was about to reach directly into the toaster. Their finger throbbed harder. 

These had to have been the two bindings, both once kept in the same place on a shelf in the workroom, from the look of what was destroyed around them. Bannick’s binding seemed to have no reaction the way Aris’s had, but Fern also supposed some kind of contract or written binding was a very different thing than a part of a person straight up being taken out.

Fern had found them.

But… how should they deal with them now they’d found them? Fern stared at the two odd items, biting their lip. Maybe they could destroy them—but how?

Or maybe there was a way to claim them for their own?

[Comment below with a suggestion for Fern]

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