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[quote=Anise]She cried out at the top of her lungs. "Randold! Other girl! I'm coming to help!" She felt odd calling out someone by their sex instead of their name. Back in her castle she had known everyone by name: her maid, the guards, the stable boy, the other maids, her father, her mother, and many others. She waited briefly for a reply before she slowly and cautiously headed after the scream she had heard. Her heart pounded so hard she thought that it might end up jumping out of her throat.[/quote]

The trees around her were dark, twisting, tangled, dripping with moss and lichen and thick swaths of spiderweb, their branches thin like veins. The ground was soft and fanned with ferns. The air had grown damp and thick and cool, as if just after the rain. Fog crept around her like something alive.

And then, fireflies appeared out of the fog, pulsing their light. They moved ahead of her, guiding her, while the forest seemed to creep all around.

Finally there was a break in the trees, and Anise would see the back of the lantern-tree rising up ahead of her. The wolf was digging in the ground, snapping at little striped rodents that darted in the weeds. Whenever a rodent would get close to Randold or Hania, the wolf would leap upon it and gnash it between its jaws. But only Anise could see this -- to Randold and Hania, it was only a terrible noise in the dark.

[quote=Randold]He stared into the blackness, he mentally steeled himself then yelled to the wolf, and whatever was with it. "I do not know why we are here, and in honestly I do no need to. What I do know is that we... they, the others that came with me to this land, have done nothing wrong that they deserve to live. So I ask you, whoever you are, to allow us to leave, myself and the girl here with me, to reunite with our comrades." Randold paused unsure if he should continue, however he knew that just asking wouldn't be enough. "If my first request cannot be fulfilled, then instead only allow the girl to survive, you can consider my own life to be forfeit, that I will cease any struggles to resist only if she is allowed to escape."[/quote]

A low, rumbling growl emitted from the dark wolf. The hissing sound of creatures weaving through the grass grew closer. There were no words, but Randold would discover that he knew instinctively that the snarl was not a threat. It was a warning.

There was a voice in his head, like a hissing whisper in the depths of his ear. It did not belong to the wolf, but to something or someone that permeated the dark forest itself: [i]I accept your bargain. She will be spared. And you, as forfeit, are mine.[/i]

At that moment, something small and light landed on Randold and stabbed the back of his neck as with a white-hot pin. A searing, crippling pain ravaged down his spine like fire.

Only Anise, perhaps, would see the huge black spider as it struck.

The wolf lunged forward, opened its jaws and wrenched the thing off of him; a crunching and snarling accompanied the hiss of the weeds around them.

[quote=Hania]The meanings seem deep, but she recites them without giving them a thought, its as if she's reciting from memory rather than meaning. As if she were reciting something in a different language than her own:

All the gods, deposed and ascended, I beseech now in my time of need,
Guthrun, deposed councilor, give me comfort as I ride into battle,
Runa, ascended councilor, give me the knowledge I need to defeat my foe,
Herleifr, deposed general, give me cunning that I might cheat death,
Ragnheithr, ascended general, give me foresight to counter my foes' advance.
Ethelred, deposed king, give me the courage to face my final foe,
Cynefrith, ascended king, give me righteous justice if I pass to the next life.
. . . Bless me, make me holy, burn off my sins and restore my virgin soul.[/quote]

There was a small light in the darkness: the iron flower of Hania's rosary pulsed a faint glow, like that of the runes on the platform. To Randold's eyes, it softly illuminated Hania's face.

[quote=Anise]She quickly acted by doing the one thing she could think to do: slam the branch she held into the vines to get them to let go. She didn't have much for strength, but she put as much of her weight as she could into the strike hoping it would do something.[/quote]

The roots around Randold's leg relaxed as if suddenly dead -- and so did the surface beneath them. For they were not sitting on the solid ground at all, but on a net of mossy roots that stretched across the gaping hole beneath the platform. The once-solid surface unraveled quickly, sagged, and dropped away under them like broken string. In the dark, Randold, Hania and Anise would find themselves suddenly falling.

Should any of them attempt to crawl back onto solid ground -- where the rodents were teeming and squeaking and hissing -- the wolf lunged at them with a gnashing snarl and shoved them forcefully back into the well.

Randold, Hania and Anise could cling to the roots as they fell, but they would only break away the moment weight was put on them. The sounds of rushing weeds and the growling wolf slipped away above them; in the darkness they could feel the air shift, and walls close in around them as they fell, and fell, with no way to know just how long they had to fall.

Far above them, a wolf howled.

They would catch a glimpse of fireflies before they splashed into the still surface of the water. It was warm and deep.

The fireflies hovered over the surface of the water, their pulsing glow reflected like glass. Only Anise might see that they were inside a wide cavern, and that a smooth rocky shoreline was only a short distance away.

Something beneath the water brushed Hania's leg.

[quote=Arin]He curiously observed the flying insect hover behind him. To his amazement, more appeared seemingly out of thin air. He gripped the lantern tightly, his eyes glistening the red and yellow light that illuminated his face. He admired the sight of the insects, and couldn't help but grow fond of their presence. He was mesmerized.

Arin pulled his eyes away from the curious sight before him, laying them back on the path that Anise had bolted down. With a malevolent expression in his face and movements, he followed the princess.[/quote]

He had taken his eyes off of Anise. When he looked again, and no matter how far or fast he ran with the reddened light ahead of him, she would not reappear. He would not hear Hania's cries, nor Anise's response. Only crickets, and the sigh of the wind in the trees -- and a rustling and squeaking in the bushes.

The owl sat on a branch just ahead, watching him with eyes that stared into his soul. Beyond it, a single path led onward and up a hill. There was a small candlelight in the distance, and the sound of rushing water, but the light didn't reach far enough to show him what was there.

The owl swooped down from the branch with silent wings, opened its beak and devoured a few of the fireflies in one snap.

Cries, chanting, the howl of a wolf, a faint splash of water -- all of it led to the right, where with the lantern's help he might stumble upon the tree, the opened platform, the angry wolf with little rodents jumping on it and biting its pelt.

[b]TICK . . . TOCK . . . TICK . . . TOCK . . .[/b]

The metal platform began to turn again, to seal the cavern once more.