Beaten through dense wood is a path carved by the swords of poor but brave souls and it is paved with their corpses.

Their weapons were blunted on the dense web of vines and roots sealing them back from the idea of a desire.

They were told by the others before their departure that any who darest venture there be beckoning for torture.

Perhaps ignoring their warning or being bold enough despite it, they ventured forth for they felt the mission was dire.

 

Embarking now they left cleaving away, left and right, high and low, at all which strangled their freedom.

“Release the way to us foul over growths! Your binds belong burnt in heaps and trunks sawed through!”

The wood did not agree nor did it concede. So the flagrant warriors swung away and sang “Te Deum!”

Many branches were broken, twines untied, but a hulking mass of growths still held their path was occluded.

 

“Cease your incessant hacking!” Called out a man, adorned in pale robes, holding forth a beacon over head.

Upon a staff, amassed twine sunk in boiled swine fat burning like a comet staining the night sky,

“Relinquish your reward unto us you accursed forest, or suffer at your own peril as I unveil true dread!”

Howling back from the path blew a sour breeze that made his torch shutter. However his fire did not die.

 

“Foul density of senseless trees, your cry cannot excuse your inevitable demise!”

Lowering the beacon into the mass of cleaved off vines and chips of trunks that had been struck.

“Stop! Fool! You’ll waste the prize with the world if you proceed!” His compatriots jeered and cried.

“Nonsense. You see! I’m here to kill off this infestation. Upon your forest here a plague has run amuck!”

 

Writhing and crying out of the shattered limbs crawled out thousands of pestilent insects.

Gasping in horror and shivering in revulsion the crowd stepped back behind the cloaked exterminator.

The fire rose above the pile of timber into the leaves and into the breeze! “Sickness may no longer rest!”

“But what of the trophy?” One asked. “Fools. Your forest shall be purged, and your health may be restored.

 

A purge was required to rid you of this scourge. With such pests enforcing the plants of years past you shall have never advanced more than yards.

Armaments are no match against an infection. You cannot rid yourself of sickness without defusing what parasites live within your veins.

You shall be to weak to wield with effectiveness any weapon you may forge. None shall fight until their energy has been recharged.

Then you shall see, when hacking away with your full vitality, how these scorched timbers will crumble into dust like ashen chains.”

 

Hissing and screeching, crackling and snapping, the blazing landscape seems to stretch up from the depths of the dirt into Heaven.

Hoards of bugs were writhing on the ground singing a haunting tune of high pitch suffering.

Once lively greenery, turned grey by this plague, was collapsing in chunks before all of them.

With his back to the fire and arms raised high the robed wanderer called out, “Beget your coveting!”

 

“Beware now, truth seekers, for I am but the third of seven!

Your path shall be released, but your water may now be diseased!

Do not behave abruptly at every provocation.

Keep your wits about you and remember sycophants live to make you bereaved!”

6 June 2017