can you hear them?
can you hear them in the distance?
can you hear their song floating on the wind?
floating on the wind and dancing through the tree and racing through the valley?
you can?
oh that's good, very good.
what are they?
they're pipes of course.
they're pipes carved from wood and stone and horn and bone.
they're pipes that signal his arrival.
who is he?
oh he's the piper of course.
the piper who herds the sheep.
the sheep who are just like you.
you.
you are one of the sheep now.
is he here to save you?
oh no child.
you couldn't be more wrong.
he's here to lead you astray.
to lead you to the path that will lead you to his death.
hush now.
i can hear him running on the wind.
i must leave you now.
but worry not, this will all be over soon.
now close your eyes.
and simply embrace his song.------------the night is pitch black. the sun had set just minutes ago and already the night lacks anything but darkness. it's a new moon he knows; the moonless sky enough to confirm the sinking feeling in his bones. according to all logic, the moon should be a nice waning crescent, and elsewhere in the world it is. but not here. in this small section of the land where this world blurs with the next everything plays by the rules of the magic.
somewhere in the distance, a scream rises up, harsh and high and full of nothing but pain. to his ears, it's the scream of an injured prey animal, one who is desperately searching for help. something inside of him stirs awake, desperate and eager to help the injured animal; but he pushes it down. he knows in his mind that the scream belongs not to a prey animal, sickly and injured; but to a predator -- a predator who lures her prey deep into the forest with cries of terror before she and her mate descend in a flurry of claws and teeth and magic -- and so he stays rooted in place, standing beneath an ancient yew tree.
for several hours he stands there silently, during which time the forest is silent. silent in such a way that not even the bats and owls and other night life dared to stir. silent in a way where the air hung heavy in his lungs. silent in a way that only death's voice could be heard. then -- as if a switch had been flicked in the night -- everything springs into action: the owls cry out into the night, the bats launch into the air, wyverns weave through the underbrush. somewhere in the east, a red glow arises, a tell-tale sign that the witch coven has begun to stir. most nights, most nights that would be his sign to move, to begin his hunt. but not tonight. no, tonight he's hunting for another master.
it's after a monster with wooden antlers and the stench of magic clinging to him stalks by his spot beneath the yew tree that he hears it. the harsh and guttural chanting in a language he does not yet fully understand. chanting that grows louder and stronger with every minute. chanting that signals the one he was to hunt for had finally arisen. finally, he moves, moving north through the forest with a level of silence that is unnatural in every way. for close to an hour he walks, until he's standing on the edge of the forest, looking into the town.
once, just a few decades ago, the forest's edge had lain miles from the town. but recently, the forest had been spreading. 10 feet one year, 2 the next, 80 the following year. its growth was random and uncontrolled, as if the forest itself was a alive. and with all the magic that flowed through it and its inhabitants, he wasn't entirely sure that it wasn't. and it was clear the mortals that called the town home were starting to see the same thing. they had noticed the monsters lurking in the forests depths - the murderers and cannibals and witches and demons - monsters that were all too eager to snatch the mortals up in their jaws as soon as they wandered into the forest.
he knows the town operates now on a strict set of rules. rules that were derived from those of the magic, the very rules that all the monsters and ghouls of the forest followed. but mortals were weak. they always had been and they always would be. and so of course there were those few who thought they above the rules, that they could dare to break them and escape unharmed. and those were the ones he claimed as his prey. ones just like the little girl who had dared to break the rules on tonight of all nights.
when the little girl steps onto the main road, that is when he sees her with his own eyes. before that, he had just known where she was, which rules she was breaking, in the very same way that the forest knows him. and it's when she begins to wander away from him that he pulls his instrument out of the air. it's nothing fancy, just a simple pipe carved from what appears to be wood. but when he raises it to his lips and begins to play, it's as though he playing fifty instruments at once. his song is haunting and grating to the ears and it shouldn't sound like paradise to the girl down the road, but it does. it sounds like sunlight dancing on the water and cotton candy in the breeze and everything and anything pleasing to the ear. and it spins through her mind and captures her attention and binds her to his spell. from now on, as long as he's playing, she has no choice but to follow his every whim. and so begins her descent into ruin.
even as he plays, he steps back into the forest, weaving carefully through the thorns and brambles, and she follows. a marionette strung along by his pipes. his pipes that play the most wretched sound and are made of both everything and nothing -- of wood and stone and bone and antler – composition changing with every new note played. somewhere along their walk through the forest, the shadows begin to darken, monsters hiding in their depths. he ignores them at first -- he’s more powerful than almost anything who dares to wander through the forest –- but when the shadows give way to two towering monsters with antlers of bone on their heads and blood stained claws and teeth he pauses and stops his playing.
this is their forest he knows, gifted to the female by the devil himself, they have every right to appear before him, but never before have they done so, at least not like this. they know his rules as well as he does, that he cannot lead a puppet to their death, only to the path that will lead to it. but they seem not to care as they slid between him and the small female, as they open their jaws wide and latch their teeth onto her throat, as they reach out with their claws and tear open her heart. he can only watch frozen in horror as they tear her corpse into small pieces.
it’s only when the monsters step back from the corpse before them and look up into the woods is he able to tear his eyes away. standing before them, tall and proud, is a viscet of red and black, with large twisting curling horns atop his head. the newcomer grins a terrifying grin and waves his paw and the stench of death and magic fills the air as the corpse begins to weave itself back together. it’s then the piper turns and flees, scared beyond unreasonable measure.
------------do you blame him for your death?
the piper?
you really shouldn't my child.
he was not the one who killed you.
the one who smothered your lungs with flowers.
with flowers and vines and thorns and branches.
that was the monster of the garden my child.
the monster is the one who killed you.
but what about the piper you ask?
he simply lead you astray.
he lead you to the path that would lead to your death.
it was your choice to walk down it.
and besides child, killing is not in his nature.
he leaves that for the monsters of the forest.
what is he the then you ask?
if not a monster than what?
he's a legend my dear.
a cursed soul.
one who made the mistake of binding his soul to his worst fear.
his worst fear?
oh that is simple.
more than anything else, the piper fears the dead. ------------he hadn’t always feared the dead. when he was a youngling, one who had nothing to care for but playtime, he didn’t know to fear the dead. the only thing he had cared to fear in those days were silly things –- thunder and lightning and monsters who hid in closets (later in life he learned that true monsters did not hide in closets, they hid in plain sight or the very depths of the darkest woods).
it wasn’t until he saw his first corpse –- the body of his mother laying prone in the street, lifeless eyes staring into nothing and limbs unnaturally limp – was the fear sown into his heart. it was a fear that grew larger with every day, with every new body that was found lying in the streets. with every victim that was claimed by the death of the plague. it was odd to others, that he didn’t fear the rats or the disease or the sickly, that he didn’t fear the very factors that caused death but rather the dead themselves.
but his fear of the dead was manageable. manageable all throughout the plague, throughout the time where he discovered his magic, throughout the time he played to lead the pests away. his fear was manageable, until he realized on night that he too would eventually become one of the dead. that was the day his fear grew and grew and grew until it had overwhelmed his entire being.
that was the night he cast each and every spell he could think of, desperate to find a way to live forever. and it was one such spell that managed to call the devil’s necromancer to him. the devil’s necromancer with his blood red coat and black skeleton markings and the stench of death and magic. the necromancer was his greatest fear personified, a corpse brought to life. it took all of his begging and magic to convince the necromancer to spare his life. to spare his life in return for the souls of all that the piper would ensnare.
but he was mortal still. a fact he learned when the devil appeared before him in flames of black and red. the devil needed a hunter, one that would serve his forest and keep it feed. and the piper would serve that purpose well. so the devil took pity on him, placing him in a forest of death and monsters and magic in exchange for immortality. and he agreed because still he feared the dead.
little did he know; in the forest he would be forced to face the dead with every passing night.
------------
------------for five weeks after that night -- that night where his puppet was stolen from under him -- he's able to avoid all other inhabitants of the forest. he still lures in the outsiders, the stragglers who dare to come too close to the forest's edge, but he doesn't lead them directly into fate's jaws this time. doesn't drop them on the doorstep of the witches' cabin or push them into the garden of death and flowers. he just leads them into the heart of the woods and vanishes. so very very careful to avoid coming in contact with any inhabitant of the forest.
he's not scared of them. not truly. but for the first time in centuries, he's been served a crystal clear reminder of just what they represent. death. and he doesn't fear death, knows it's part of life, but with death comes the dead, and the dead is what he cannot stand. every time he closes his eyes he can only picture shrike and alexander tearing into the body of the one girl, he can only see her cold lifeless corpse staring at him with unblinking eyes. and where he sees one corpse he sees many.
he's began to notice the corpses of the forest in ways he had learned to look past all those years ago. he see's the prone corpses of squirrels lying in the jaws of snakes, he see's the bones of deer scattered in the den's of wolves. but most of all, he sees the corpses of nearly every puppet he has lead into the forest. the corpse of the silver and green viscling hangs from a tree in hanahaki's garden, the hide of the red and yellow male is sewn into a quilt in tituba's cave, the skull of the black and blue female sits as the center piece on lahash's table. everywhere he looks he sees the dead.
and it's too much. it's just too much. he wants to run and flee and hide away in a small cave till the end of time. but he can't. he's tried already. he's tried so many times already and each time the forest had simply turned him around and lead him back to it's center and the one time he had actually made it out he had been stopped. stopped by the devil's necromancer in all of his terrifying glory and he had forced him to watch as corpse after corpse was made to crawl out of the ground. he cannot escape the forest and it's death and it's inhabitants. but he can hide. so hide he does.
and really, it's a miracle that he manages to hide for five weeks. but it's on the first night of the sixth week that his self imposed reclusion is forced to come to an end. he's deep in the west corner of the forest, close to where tituba hides in her cave, when he hears a rustling in the bushes to his right. at first, he ignores it, thinking it to be a fox or hellhound or some other such harmless creature, but when the definite viscet shaped shadow falls over him, he spins around. it takes all he has to not summon his pipes, to not try and ensnare the viscet before him in the clutches of his music. but he refrains, if only because he knows it would fail. one can never be ensnared in his clutches twice.
standing before him is the very same girl he had lead into the forest weeks ago on the night of halloween. the very same girl who he had watched get torn to pieces. the very same girl who is no doubt a walking corpse pieced together and reanimated by kieran himself. immediately fear blossoms in his heart and races through his veins, his lungs shaking and rattling with every breath. it's only after he's stood petrified in absolute terror for five minutes or more that he manages to find his voice.
"
who are you?" he finally manages to ask, voice stiff with fear. "
locasta." she answers simply, voice heavy with the drawling accent of the region. he's been given a name, but it's not enough. a name doesn't explain why she's standing before him. why shrike and alexander had chosen her out of all his puppets to slaughter. "
why are you in my forest still?" he doesn't ask how she got here, he knows that well enough, and he knows better than to ask how she's standing before him. demons and monsters have more secrets than not and are loath to share them. "
your forest?" her voice drifts upwards towards the end, turning his statement into a question meant to mock, "
this is my forest as well now. tituba and megara have taken me in as part of their clan. they've found that the dead are more likely to talk to those who have suffered similar fates in life as them."
and that makes sense. it makes sense that the dead would only talk to the dead. but the knowledge, the affirmation, that the viscet standing in front of him is dead is too much to handle. his heart spikes with fear and his knees are weak and his vision is blurring at the edges and -- he has to get away from her. before he can turn and run, run and flee to anywhere but here, locasta speaks up. "
kieran sends his regards by the way. he says you're doing a good job, almost enough to make up for that one incident centuries ago."
it's almost as if she can read his mind, and maybe she can, but suddenly everything makes sense. he knows now why he's being punished in like this, being forced to confront the dead constantly. but he doesn't thank her. he can't handle that, can't handle being in the presence of the dead any longer (not when with every passing second the fear in his lungs keeps building, building, building, building) and so he turns and flees. flees like a true coward.
------------why does the piper fear the dead?
that's a difficult question my dear.
difficult because his fear is so irrational.
you should know though, that he grew up in a plague.
he grew up in a time of sickness and death.
in a time where every other person dropped dead in the streets.
it was pure luck that the piper survived.
pure luck and magic.
you didn't know the piper had magic?
i thought it would be obvious my dear.
he can ensnare anyone and anything with his song.
his song that leads them to the path of their death.
it's how he was able to ensnare the rats of the city.
the very same rats that carried the plague in their bones.
i thought you would know that.
the pied piper is a legend after all my dear. ------------there had been a plague once, centuries ago. a plague that had spread from city to city and nation to nation. a plague that would claim anyone and everyone without hesitation. a plague that would leave no survivors after it had sunk it's fangs into the bodies of it's victims. and he had grown up in this plague. he had watched as funeral after funeral was held and body after body was burned with fire, the cemeteries long past the point of overflowing. plague and sickness and death was everything he had ever known, and it hadn't bothered him at first, not really, not until the plague claimed his mother at least.
it was then that he realized the true fear that came with the plague. the fear of the dead. the fear of mortality. with each passing day, he watched as more and more people dropped dead like flies, and with each subsequent death, his own sense of mortality grew. if everything continued like it had been, it was only a matter of time before he too contracted the sickness. until his blood boiled with infection and his lungs shriveled up and his heart collapsed and he keeled over dead. and so he became desperate to find a way to end it.
he tried every spell book and potion he could get his hands on in the library. and nothing worked. he didn't have the right type of magic in his bones an old and dying woman told him as she pressed a pipe into his hands. his magic wasn't the physical type she said, it was the type that floated through the air and across the ears. and he didn't understand at first. didn't understand until months later when he finally gained the courage to press the pipes to his lips and attempt to play.
and oh how he played. he played a song of flowers and waterfalls and wealth and honey. a musical song that was sweeter than anything ever heard before on the earth. and ti was then that he understood. he was a siren witch, one who's magic lay in the sense of sound. he spent months learning how to play the pipes and harness his magic. but it quickly became apparent that there was only one use for his magic -- ensnaring others to his will. and it was that skill that gave him the answer to his problem. the answer to his plague.
it was simple, in hindsight. on the night of the new moon he gathered in the darkest part of town. the part of the city where the rats basically formed a carpet to walk on, and he began to play. he began to play a song on his pipes of wood and bone and antler and stone and he ensnared the rats to his will. he walked all through the city, playing all the while, until there was not a single free rat in the town. and then together, the rats and he, they walked far out to the countryside, towards the edge of the country where the land gave way to the sea in the form of steep cliffs. and there he stopped playing. only for the rats to surge away from him in fear, toppling over the edge of the cliff in a frantic terrified mass.
from that day on, he traveled from city to city, working to stop the spread of the plague.
(decades later he would learn that the plague was kieran's work. that it was the devile's necromancer who had placed thousands upon thousands of disease infested rats in the countries of the world. that he had been harvesting the souls of the dead to fuel a spell which was older than time. that by ensnaring all the rats in his trap he had cost the necromancer millions in souls, a mistake he would pay dearly for in the coming centuries.)
----------------------------------first large cluster of regular text is intended to be read as the spooky tale
the second cluster of regular text is intended to be read as his greatest fear
all italicized text and other text are extras
all viscets mentioned belong to myself with the exception of 'the devil'
'the devil' is
james'
tyramet and is used with permission
all text was written by myself
the first art piece is by myself
second piece is by
bettalong 
Art by 
