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neonthewrite · 2 days

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Shackled Forest

The next GT July prompts were Jewelry and Cursed, and though I started with just the first one in mind, it fits the second pretty well too, so I'll count it for both. Got a new concept for me to play around with, some new characters ... we all know I love a forest character.

Introducing Morrel. He's doing his best, but it's difficult.

~~~

The jewels hadn’t shown a sign of life in a long time.

Sometimes Morrel naively, stupidly, foolishly-optimistically thought that they’d finally fallen inert, all power sapped away into the atmosphere never to bother him again. But if that were the case, he’d be able to remove them. The thick wrist bangles, glittering with teal and blue gems, would unclasp and fall away while the choker with its enormous ruby at his throat would fly open and he’d be free of the weight at last.

But no. They stayed with him, more than a human’s weight in gold and a matching quantity of precious stones, heavy and lifeless, until that morning.

It began as a stirring dread in the back of his mind that he almost hadn’t recognized in the early hours. By sunrise, though, he couldn’t deny what it meant.

A human had found and donned the fourth and final piece of jewelry in the set. A ring, the band human-sized rather than giant, sporting a humble diamond little more than a fleck of glitter to his eyes. Despite its small, nondescript appearance, though, that ring meant only trouble for him.

He felt no compulsion, no drive towards the wearer of that ring, which meant that they didn’t know what they’d picked up. That was good. There was still time to figure something out. Time before they understood they had a giant bound to their whim, no matter what it may be. If they figured that out, Morrel would be stuck with them, and they with him, until they passed on or renounced the ring.

No wearer had cast off the ring before. He had no reason to believe this newcomer would either.

To that end, he rushed towards where he’d last seen that infernal ring. The height of a young tree himself, nearly thirty feet, he couldn’t do much sprinting on the forest floor without damaging everything in his path. Instead, Morrel skimmed over the canopy, his boots barely touching the crowns of the trees like a water skimmer barely touched the surface of a lake. To anyone on the ground below, he would be a passing wind and little more.

He tried not to think too hard about what he might need to do when he arrived. If he indeed found the ring near where he expected it: on the tiny, fragile hand of a human. He couldn’t touch the ring itself, thanks to his own accessories. He couldn’t harm someone who’d activated the power in the ring. For someone who didn’t know, though … Morrel had options. None of them were good.

The alternative couldn’t happen again. That ring had passed through generations of tiny human hands, leaving him at the command and mercy of tyrants and warmongers, pillars of greed and conquest alike. He’d never felt relief the likes of what he felt when the last king to wear that ring had fallen to a highwayman, his jewels and money taken away to be passed around among thieves. One of Morrel’s first actions taken with free will in centuries had been to terrorize a camp of bandits, to put his hands on a human before he could take up the ring.

A nondescript piece of jewelry was easily forgotten, tamped into the mud and ruin of that camp. No one remembered a ring over a gold-bedecked rampaging giant-of-the-woods, with skin like tree bark, long, bloody hands and sharp features, four narrow eyes glowing with the colors of sunset and a voice like a storm.

Morrel didn’t want to hurt anyone like he’d done then. He didn’t need to hurt anyone. He merely needed to separate them from the ring that would seal his fate.

Whatever human it was had some choice in the matter too.

At less than half a mile from where that camp had stood decades ago, Morrel slowed his dash, sinking into the woods with only a whisper of leaves against his skin and tattered clothes.

He couldn’t do much about the shining gold of his jewelry, but Morrel had at least switched out his old clothes, fine things in the colors of the kingdom he’d belonged to for so long. He wore rougher fabrics now, pieced together or bartered from the occasional passing hill-giant, in the greens and greys of the woods he called home. When he sank into the forest, it was like a new tree had sprouted there and began slinking between the trunks.

The dread in his core ebbed and flowed like a tide. Morrel couldn’t say whether his own anxiety or the actions of whoever had the ring did it. He could barely remember the first time that ring had fallen into human hands, how it had felt then. The freedom of before was a faraway dream, hazy and faded by centuries of subjugation. What he had now wasn’t even freedom, not with that threat constantly waiting.

The threat that, now, hung so close over him he practically felt its shadow.

Stalking through the trees, the dread became sharper, more focused. He had never kept track of where exactly the ring had fallen—he never needed to. This clarity always grew when he came too close to it. Only bad things came from that little band of gold and his whole body knew it; if running as fast as he could in the opposite direction would help, he’d have abandoned it long ago.

A small voice mumbled up ahead—no, two voices. Morrel’s eyes narrowed and he crept even slower towards the sound, blending into the trees despite his bulk. His recent years of avoiding humans hadn’t been enough to forget how to read tone in a small voice; they were arguing over something. One of them was old and gruff, the other young and fresh. It was more than the simple kind of arguing between a willful youth and their elder.

Creeping close enough to parse the words but not enough for them to spot him easily between the trees, Morrel’s core chilled like winter.

“I’ve got a feeling about this thing. Why would we just give this away for what’s probably not enough money to solve our problems? There’s something magic in it, we just need—”

“What we need is money, you little idiot. Not flights of fancy and pretending the dirty jewelry you found in the woods is magic. Give it here!”

Foliage and twigs shuffled as the pair apparently chased each other a few steps. Not far—the older voice grunted in discomfort and the younger voice huffed defiantly. “It is magic. It resized to fit me as soon as I put it on. And I’m going to find out what it does!”

It was as good a cue as any. Morrel couldn’t allow the owner of that young, hopeful voice find out what the accursed ring did. He abandoned stealth for speed and surged forward, slipping past tree trunks like they were reeds in a pond, scraping away bark and low branches.

And then he was upon them.

He was fast, faster than his bulk might suggest. One long hand dropped to the older human where he stood, knocking him from his feet and pinning him harshly to the ground. Weak struggles met Morrel’s unforgiving palm, though he didn’t lean enough weight onto the man to give him more than bruises.

The other hand snatched at the other human where she stood on a boulder jutting out of the ground, surely the spot she planned to flaunt her spryness over her companion while she talked wistfully of magic and boons and happy tales. Morrel’s hand found her all the same, long fingers like steel coiling around her middle before she could flinch away. His thumb lengthened and sharpened as he hauled her off the stone, the point resting just a breath away from her throat. She stared at him with wide eyes, all bravado forgotten, while her companion shouted unintelligible things from where he was stuck on the ground. She didn’t even struggle, just stared at him with wide, terrified eyes.

It wouldn’t be the first time. With and without the influence of the jewels, Morrel’s hands had been bloodied. He could do this again.

She was so young.

Had that mattered last time?

He couldn’t remember the faces or the voices of the last humans he’d accosted. They had been bandits, humans living rough much like these two seemed to be. They were so so different from the humans dressed in fine things and living in constant luxury that had hurt him. But they had the same opportunity to hurt him anyway.

He couldn’t hurt a fully aware master of that ring, but even though she wore the grubby thing on her grubby finger, she hadn’t realized its potential yet. She knew it held magic, and that provided the wary dread at the back of Morrel’s mind, the knowledge that he could be captured again. Now was the only time to save himself, and he hesitated.

It needed to be done. He’d be protecting himself. Just one little motion of his hand and it would be over. Her fate was regrettable, but his own had to matter more to him.

But she stared up at him, so young and afraid, with eyes that couldn’t have taken in two decades of life.

“Close your eyes, young thing,” he said. He didn’t have a mouth, but his voice rumbled out of him all the same, and he was grateful it didn’t betray his hesitation. “Close your eyes. Look away. Whatever is easiest.”

It wasn’t the young human but the older one that responded. “No ... no! Take me instead, if you must take someone! We meant no disrespect or trespass!”

Morrel didn’t look away from the human in his hand, but his gaze softened. His lower set of eyes closed entirely. “No. Close your eyes, little thing.”

She shook her head, though a shiver diminished some of the sense of brave defiance. Her gaze flickered over him quickly, taking in a few details of his appearance, but she didn’t waver. “Y-you don’t actually want to hurt me, do you?”

Morrel’s eyes shifted to a slightly stormier color, some grey mixing in with the sunset hues. “I want to do what is necessary. If you will not accept what mercy I can offer, that is not—”

“No, that’s not it,” the girl said, her confidence growing while his dimmed. “I can—” she broke off into a laugh and finally looked away from his face down to her pinned arm, where one hand sported the faintest glint of gold. “I can feel what you actually want.”

Morrel froze.

Somewhere within him, a lock clicked into place.

His dread peaked and then drained away to nothing.

The girl grinned wider. “I know what this ring does.”

#gtjuly #gtjuly2023 #mywriting #morrel #forest spirit #gt #g/t #giant tiny #handheld #g/t handheld

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