Marvelling at the total solitude he had stumbled into, Wulfstan came to think that this place must not be as regularly travelled by people as he had previously thought. Considering harder, Donngall had always had a less-than-optimal sense of direction, so it seemed that the family had likely gotten lost. That was the only reason that Wulfstan had been discovered and introduced into the world of humans – a strange, cosmic mistake.
Thinking of Leofric, he thought the better word for it was maybe fate. God's plan, if there was such thing as God controlling anything when something like Wulfstan could exist.
It all came down to the answer he got when he attempted to trace his five-year-old footsteps. If he could find answers, perhaps he would be told why he felt so violently attached to the man he had met by chance and why that man seemed to at least feel a fraction of that back. What that feeling was still evaded Wulfstan but its existence, not its name, was what mattered.
Trudging across the clearing with his hands wrapped tightly into anxious fists, Wulfstan headed to the spot he guessed was where he woke up. It felt viscerally familiar when he stood there. Looking up first, for some reason, he realised it was the one spot in the forest where a perfect array of light beams cut through the dense canopy and darted to the ground. A dancing pattern of green-tinted orange. That explained how, even this deep in the woods, he'd been half-blinded when he had awoken. Wulfstan found it in him to laugh, a short, amused scoff at the back of his throat, the only 'human' sound for who knows how many miles. Following the light down, he finally looked at the floor.
He didn't know what he expected to find but he was disheartened to see there were absolutely no hints at all. After five years, there wasn't even the outline of where his body had collapsed anymore, the foliage having sprung forth and flourished. Tutting, he bared his teeth in annoyance before looking out through the trees that he had once stumbled through, the memory of it scrubbed from his brain.
Staring blankly for a while did not help the matter. Wulfstan closed his eyes and tried his very hardest to dispel all the distracting sensations he was experiencing, trying to cut the rope that held his heart and yanked at it, demanding for him to go back to Leofric, and quell the all-consuming ache in his stomach. Digging his nails into his palms, the sudden pressure – no pain, not that he was surprised anymore – managed to clear everything away for no more than a second.
It was more than an enough; instinct took over quickly.
Not allowing his thoughts to catch up for even a moment, his feet were suddenly propelling him forward, weaving around trees and bushes that cluttered the way he was going. This was somewhere people didn't venture – it was the realm of the animals. Yet this was where Wulfstan knew he came from. How did he end up there, so deep in the woods as a child, to begin with?
That was all he could think as he marched forward, pushing back the undisturbed branches that threatened to scratch his face and tear his clothes, stumbling over roots he couldn't see. A herd of deer startled in the distance, disrupting the quiet. The forest sprung to life with the dancing of their hooves and the cacophonous, feathery sound of the birds leaping into the air. Pheasants, judging from the patterned tail feathers that flashed around the leaves and trees. Wulfstan felt out of place yet so perfectly at home.
He knew this place. He had been here before. But he couldn't remember why he knew it, why he had been here before, as if he really hadn't been awake before meeting the Smythe's. It all felt like the hazy remnants of a dream – that was something that Ita and Leofric had told him about, always having vivid dreams but not remembering them clearly when they woke up. Wulfstan wished he could experience the magic of a dream – there was nothing pleasant about the haze he was trudging through now.
The dim, green glow of the woods was dampening, the obscured sun evidently beginning to vanish behind the horizon. Only a day had passed yet Wulfstan felt as if he had been adventuring for years. He didn't care if the sun set or if the darkness consumed the world, all he needed to do was make it to the end of the route his feet were dragging him on, further yanking on the tether between his supposed heart and Leofric.
Exhaustion didn't set in, as it never did, but Wulfstan was becoming exceedingly uneasy. The environment around him kept getting denser, darker and more treacherous by the moment. He was certain a human – or something like him – had not stepped foot in this part of the woods for many, many years, excluding whatever he had been doing. before he could remember. It was desolate despite how abundant the land was. There was little chance he would find a utopian society of things like him out here.
Lost in his anxious remarks, Wulfstan almost fell into the mouth of the cave that sat in the middle of his path, covered by brush and shrubbery so completely that he had thought it was a small hill.
"What the shit?"
-
It took the better part of three hours to completely clear the cave mouth, densely packed with bracken that it was almost a safe layer to walk over. Not quite, though, hence why Wulfstan had put his foot through the barrier and discovered said cave mouth.
Now bared completely to the world, the cave's contents remained completely shrouded, the empty blackness too dark even for Wulfstan's superior vision. It reminded him of the gaping maw of a predator – even if it was completely toothless, an impending sense of doom struck him. Wulfstan was suddenly very aware of his mortality. Or his supposed lack of it.
Whatever it was, Wulfstan did not like it one bit.
A frigid air swept up from that cavernous mouth, ruffling Wulfstan's hair and unsettling him further. Something primal was awakening in him, urging him to be careful. This place reeked of death, but Wulfstan sensed that, despite everything, it didn't scream of a trap. Death, yes, but it was ancient, long dormant. Melancholic, peaceful, like the old graveyard by the Church in the village.
There was an almost vertical drop at the mouth of the cave, the near-sheer slope that led down into it both horribly threatening and dangerously inviting. Wulfstan was consumed by his eternal curiosity and by the tugging that was overwhelming the one that led back to Leofric. No matter how he fought, something was tethering him to the bottom of that cave.
He didn't have much to worry about, even if he tumbled in a dangerous freefall to an unseen bottom, it wouldn't hurt. Even if his bones stuck out of his skin, they'd be back in place in moments, Wulfstan was sure. Even if he did die, did it even really matter? Nonetheless, his first step forward was tentative and careful, patting about for purchase on the gravelly slope. Pebbles skittered down, echoing when they made contact with whatever was at the bottom of the cavern. Hopefully, just a safe place to stand.
After a few moments, Wulfstan was fully inside the black hole, the feeble light of the dying sun through the thick canopy of leaves barely illuminating even a stride's depth into the tunnel. Squinting slightly, he could see the craggy walls closing in tighter and tighter around him until Wulfstan had to lay down fully and scoot down the slope on his ass. He was too tall and too long-limbed to make any other move as the ceiling of the cave got closer and closer until the stone was almost scraping the skin off the tip of his hooked nose. Wriggling feet first, he kept going until his shoes found solid, flat ground.
Sliding the last of the way out, he realised, from his crouched position, that the angled tunnel had opened into a spacious antechamber. Wulfstan could stand up fully again and stretch out his arms to their complete span without coming even remotely close to touching anything – it was incomprehensibly huge in the black nothing. His fingers were wrapped in empty air.
He had no idea how deep underground he was now, but it had certainly taken him several minutes to get through that tight tunnel. This place felt uniquely untouched, yet an instinct told him that this wasn't a place of nature – hands had made it. It had the soulless feel that abandoned man-made structures had.
Dread abruptly surged through Wulfstan. The poignant, prickling sensation of beady eyes burned into him. Unable to think of what to do, he called into the void. "Hello?"
It echoed endlessly in the seemingly empty space.
The sensation of being watched dissipated but he certainly didn't feel alone. Wulfstan couldn't put his finger on whether he truly thought there was something down there with him or if it was the uncomfortable idea of familiarity. Taking shaking steps forward, Wulfstan disappeared further into the toothless maw before him. As he walked, the impossible stillness of the air became cloying, sticking to his skin like mud. The slight scuffles of his shoes on the rock echoed endlessly off the hidden cave walls. Darting his blinded eyes, unsure now that his perpetually perfect vision didn't work, having never been in a place that he couldn't see, he prayed that there was nothing in the darkness with him. He couldn't hear nor smell another presence, so there shouldn't be.
Unless it was someone else like him, that didn't breathe, didn't smell, no blood pumping through its veins.
"Is anyone there?"