arbustus ara - ink

Leper bark plummets from the Aberration's flanks, revealing plant material masquerading as mammal flesh. The slabs of bark bear the appearance of a tree's normal exterior carapace but it's inner side bears a resemblance to a thick yellow fat ... a fat that makes the most horrid noise on contact with the pool of blood at the creature's now forming lower limbs. The pool was pulsating wildly. One moment the tide of endless blood flowing from the demonic maiden taunts the nearby shores with threats of overflowing it's banks...only to be pulled back abruptly as the thing absorbs more and more of the blood beneath it. Each subsequent gulp causes more of the fatty rotten bark to give way, revealing further glimpses into the humanoid form this denizen of chaotic nature would construct.

My Father had always spoken of the fell nature of the wood, how a long forgotten sect would convene here and share dark secrets, revel in their physical forms with supernatural creatures and dine on the flesh of humans. Their Priests consorted with earthen fiends, planting their seed into the Earth itself hoping to gain the favor of the Feculent Queen of the Wood. Upon receiving the biological offering of a worthy suitor, a pair of skeletal legs caked in mud and swamp sediment would spring forth from the ground wrapping around the waist of the unholy man. The layers of terran material adorning the bones would fill out into the soft supple skin of a woman’s leg. The putrid stench of compressed moist compost would quickly give way to thick plumes of lavender and rose. In rapid succession the other portions would rise from the earth beneath the man. Arms covered in worming sinew and vegetative muscle fibers, worked their way up the outer portions of the Man’s arms. A mud filled skeletal smile would lazily trudge through the dirt giving ample time for the Earth Worms and Carrion Beetles to scurry to safety. The two clumps of filth which filled the skull’s eye sockets eroded away to reveal a pair of bulbous cloudy eyes. The Queen’s head was adorned with a tangle of briars and roots that held desperately to their former earthen homes below. As the rows of thorn like teeth would near the suitor’s mouth, he was to pledge an eternal oath to not only offer his body and soul to the will of the Begrimed Bitch of Balewood but he was also to serve as a guardian to the one thousand Verminous Muck spawn the Baroness of the Unclean would birth. He was then to extend his tongue into the Queen’s mouth for her to remove, sealing the pact. After she consumed the mouthful of flesh the man would then be bestowed with immortality so that he might serve her Majesty’s will and the will of their childer. He was also gifted with dark knowledge and even darker powers. This knowledge would be his and his alone, never to speak of. Those who dared commune with outsiders were devoured by their own monstrous hybrid shames.

These new men would roam the Great Forest’s edge seeking small settlements to infiltrate, hoping to find three to five small children. The youths would be escorted back to the Wood’s hollow where the maiden lay. Under the utter darkness of the New Moon the wordless Priests bound the children in large Patula Tree leaves and small vines. They then stuffed the human parcels inside the stone maiden atop the Hollow’s crag. When they removed their old cold hands from the squirming warm masses below, the Maiden returned to it’s former closed position. The small final forceful nudge to shut the construct completely was paired with a cacophony of liquid screams. Torrents of red spewed from the maiden’s eyes and mouth while heavier tamer spurts poured from the four auxiliary holes below. As the noise within the device reached it’s peak a vehement roar cracked into being at the crag’s edge. The Fathers' stepped back across the bank and stared as another child was born.

This instance I see before me leaves me immobile.

“My God forgive me, Father forgive me…it has no eyes yet I feel it’s gaze…why does it stand toward me?”

As the shadow of the beast engulfs me I am struck with a paralyzing cold, then filled with the heat of the sun and a burning desire to do something...

wicked.