Agria stepped back nervously, brushing herself off as the tree regained its bearings, ‘Oh mighty Arcanum, I have come before you in search of answers…’ Agria said, her voice dripping in respectful fear of Arcanum’s power.
The elder oak creaked and opened its gaping wooden lips, passing through it a guttural whisper in sound, but in volume that of a spoken word. ‘Speak,’ he announced simply.
‘Mighty Arcanum, I bare a child, one who is born of the spectral. Tell me, mighty and powerful Arcanum… what is to be my child’s fate?’ Agria stood whilst the great oaks arm – a lower branch – reached over and slowly scratched under his apparent mouth. The creature considered a moment; it’s partially recognisable eyes glancing slowly over Agria.
A long moment passed and the mighty oak opened his mouth to speak, ‘your child’s fate is uncertain… I cannot pre-determine any real destiny,’ He announced slowly, in the fashion you would imagine of a tree. Agria was somewhat disappointed at the tree, especially the time it had taken to come to it’s pointless conclusion. She released a long sigh, and turned to leave. ‘However,’ the tree interrupted in a croak, Agria spun about as if she had been expecting the interruption, ‘there is something…’
‘Please, Arcanum, exalted one, inform me of this you have seen.’
‘I, elemental, have seen only a possibility of your child’s future,’ He began speaking, taking an deep breath, seeming to move all the air about them at a hasty rate, ‘I see pain… I see misery… only dark emotions come before my eyes. I see no things… only darkness…’ The tree told her. Agria’s heart doubled in pace as she thought of what it could mean, her child become an agent of evil… she could not imagine.
Agria nodded slowly, accepting the fact and turning away from the wise oak, who had begun to shrink back to the earth from whence it came to continue it’s slumber. Agria left the stone chamber, the thoughts of her child clinging unseen to her features.
Krono knelt over his mother’s grave. On the tombstone was etched the words ‘Rest Eternal, Blessed Agria,’ which basically meant that Krono’s mother was a respected priestess at one point in her life. Krono sniffed, wiping a tear from beneath his pale blue orbs, he recalled then the cause of Agria’s death. She had died giving birth to him, and an old lady who detested him had adopted him. He never knew anything about his father, as far as he knew his mother impregnated herself.
Krono had escaped his adopted mother when he turned eighteen, and had been living on the road for a year now. It had been hard in the beginning, but it had gotten better. Krono flicked his hair out of his eyes and sighed, turning over and leaning against the gravestone. He looked up into the evening sky, stars dotted the navy-purple draping above the earth. The silvery jewel that was the moon stared down at him, it’s reflection shimmering in a pool at his feet.
The grave here was not in a graveyard, but on it’s own, in a small forest. The headstone was set above a small pond, where her body had been buried. Krono didn’t know exactly where she’d been buried, but he knew she was somewhere around here. The thought didn’t irk him at all, he was too sad and weary from a year in the wilderness alone, the only company a cool breeze that followed him everywhere.
The breeze ruffled the leaves together, giving the forest subtle life. The occasional shuffle in the bushes opposite the lake reminded Krono he was not at all along in the wood. For some reason, it comforted him to know all the small, nocturnal creatures were out and about. It gave him a sense of protection, that he couldn’t be touched in this part of the wood.
Krono closed his eyes, the image of tranquil sky and trees framing that image lingered even behind his eyelids. As he slipped into a half-slumber a voice gentle trickled into his ears, it was soft, and it flowed like the water of the pond. The voice was tranquil and it sang gently to him. He took little notice, thinking of it as a beautiful dream.
The voice whispered words in an ancient tongue, and somehow he knew what they meant. The words whispered to him made sense as though they were spoken in the common tongue. They clung to him like leeches, but not at all were they as bad. They were beautiful words, and he stirred in his sleep.
The image of his mother came behind his eyelids, and he murmured in his sleep the word, ‘mother’, the agony of knowing she was gone came back to his slumbering form. He cried then more, and felt the lightest touch, much like the water. It ran gently up his arm, and through his hair. He had not known it at the time, and probably never would. But his mother had sung to him that night, gently touched him to remind him she was there, that she would stay with him forever, and the song she had recited would never leave him, that at least he knew.
The withered oak knelt before Agria. She held out her hand to the pale white branches, touching them softly. A blue ember grew were her fingertips graced the bark, and the tree creaked, lurching up. A large tree, with the subtle hints of humanoid features to it, followed the top branches of the aged oak, the wood was a deeper, more earthen brown the lower it was on the tree-man.
