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It was every druid’s dream to feel a calling from the land.

Now granted, most were quite close already to the voices of nature already– one didn’t receive the power to fluently speak the language of the birds and squirrels and rabbits, gain a mystic touch that could grow a sapling into an oak within a couple days or even channel a taste of the unfettered elements like the elders could because they had a distant relationship to such things. But a calling was different. A calling meant you had been chosen to play a unique and essential role, that of the most respected role in the enclave, that of which only the eldest, the most experienced were asked to perform. That of the Archdruid, a grove’s ultimate guardian and ambassador who would vie for its survival above all else, even the tide of civilization.

Rather naturally in modern times such a role had fallen very deeply out of practice.

After all, when the shamans of old had merged into the clergy’s ranks expanding into the old enclaves and beyond, listening to the voices of the wilds had fallen out of fashion when worship of Nurathen, the Lightsworn, had meant practicing both was simply redundant. Such was assured as the whispers from the roots and soil vanished from the ears of the green mages, that in this age of righteous expansion that they would be granted a new role as ‘intermediary’ that allowed newly fostered lands to flourish. To keep the ‘balance’ certainly, but act as teachers and counselors to quiet the juvenile temper and insubordination of the land where man followed his holy purpose to set down his tools and support himself. To speak on behalf of them and cajole the unnecessary cries of a virgin terrain to their new occupants, preparing a place already blessed by grace-given light for the splendor it was fated for.

Such was why, when arriving here, the doe had noticed the ominous shape of the clawlike snags beckoning her inside, but put that aside. After all, there was still the glimmer of hope that the usual sights and sounds– the chatter of bluebirds or chirping of squirrels followed by the sight of woodpeckers knocking on ripe, picturesque cambium while rabbits dashed across the path as her fellows tended to describe in their expeditions– would welcome her once she made it past that dreadful exterior. That it was all some sort of facade concealing a brighter grove once she’d ventured deep enough inside, like a hidden treasure meant to be unveiled to the outside!

Instead, the only sounds that had greeted her trying to squeeze through the constant presence of thorny bush were growls and hisses from beasts hidden beyond her vision as sharp, glinting yellow eyes and much worse seemed to follow her every movement inside. The caws of ravens and croaks of vultures as they hopped from branch to branch and seemed to leer at her every step, only stopping to fly down to the bones of ancient warriors and unknown victims littered underfoot, evidence of some terrible battle in the long past picked utterly clean by the scavengers above. Just fielded by the hazards of the seeping bubbling, swampy pits of muck that bubbled and gurgled like they would be hungry to swallow her up if she even took a step off the path she’d tread so far.

Even the air was tinged with it, the scent of sulfur and smoke like a fire that had never finished burning. The reek of rot and decay, almost like this place was haunted by long-dead, long-past, necromancies and other foul creations. A long lost, distraught battlefield in the Churches expansion against the malodorous forces of the world no doubt. Maybe there was some honor in that, but this couldn’t have been the place she was sent to steward! It was horrible! A festering nest of long-lost horrors! A blighted place where no man dared to tread, let alone her! And the worst part was–

“There’s too many of these stupid thorns, for Nurathen’s sake!” The deer muttered to herself as her vestments caught on yet another bundle of dry canes encroaching into the path. With a puff, she was just able to tear her sleeve away from the grip of the clambering thorns…though it seemed to take something as trade for that freedom as ripping sounds met Vylske’s ears. Looking down through recently freed arm, newly-torn holes in the cloth met her, and behind them swaying patches left behind still hanging from the crawling branches.

“Perfect,” she sighed. “Just perfect. I don’t know why I’m still out here…”

Well, alright, that was a lie. The deer knew why she was still out here; to silence the claims from her teasing fellows that she was the first ever ‘city druid’, or that she counted more as a cleric than anything. Was it her fault the untamed wild of the frontier had never called out to her compared to the order and cleanliness of the city? All that dirt and grime getting everywhere stamping down an unruly environment, all while forgoing the comforts of a bed for cold dirt while settlers yelled at you to get their crops grown already. She couldn’t be blamed for having more appreciation for the tamed, manicured grass of a city park than her current environs. She could gel with that natural essence just fine!

The doe settled for rolling her sleeve back to hide the damage as the holes were hidden by the new self-same fabric underneath. At least undertaking this meant she could finally put all that naysaying to rest; how could they call her a poor excuse of a druid when she’d been especially, singularly chosen for an honor no-one else had received in decades?

With all of the accolades, rank and prestige of the Church that returning when this place was sufficiently cleaned up would grant her too, she considered with a small smile, despite the hazard around her. That would make it all worth it.

In imagining that glory however, Vylske did miss something. How a thorny branch stretched up behind the others she’d stuck on, winding its way around them until it stood in the open air, like the head of a serpent as it casually watched her fix her sleeve. There it could’ve laid undetected, but instead moved closer and closer, serpentining through the bush until its leafy end finally rose up and prodded into her arm.

“OH!”

As the deer yelped from the touch of the thorns, the branch receded as fast as it had arrived, slinking back into the bush with a rustle. Leaving the druid bewildered about what had just occurred as she stared into the space in the shrubbery it’d left behind as she nursed her arm. Vylske blinked once at where it’d been. Then twice. And then finally once she was sure it was gone, turned her back to keep moving as she forded deeper into the dark, dreadful wood… though albeit at a faster pace. Hopefully to find the quarters of wherever this ‘archdruid’ had made his place of residence before.

Maybe she was going to be ‘responsible’ for it now, whatever that meant, but right now the deer didn’t want anything more than to simply get away from it all before it got to her first.

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I return from my time of training with another captioned sequence as the result! Comm'd of course from good friend  Volkenfox, and to which I hope you enjoy.