Great Guardian of the Dark Woods

A passage found carved inside of bloody barkwood predating the fall of the Kaldorei Empire. Said to be created by one of the earliest and foregone druidic natives of ancient Ashenvale. Some of their blood-relations connected to the Darkmoon Dynasty itself and forever ascribed to the sagas of the Shal'alor...

Hailing from the Haunted Hollows of Darkmist, pervades a melancholic mist which clings heavy to air, it lulls the ancient woodlands and wildlife into a dreamy trance, residing a deep slumber. Mysterious acts, dark pacts, folklore facts rumor it and few dare enter a sleeping sanctum of sorrow. Creaky groans cry from gnarled trees, as they bear witness when a third Darkmoon seal is broken, hearing after a dark-haired being call out, "Come!" They see, and there was a black horse! Upon it, an entrancing spirit, resplendent in black-hearted beauty, and a decaying steed, they shepherded a path that winded deeper and deeper into the field of wooden men. They were all but mere pawns, but mere pieces! Their warped faces frozen in perpetual horror, while the stars glistened above, their empty sockets illuminated a twinkling beliement of false life...

Lured in the forest, many have gone, only for the trees to whisper of dark dreams and sinister secrets. There, embedded deep are the spirits of a shepherd al while sullen somber songs surround the Dark Woods, watched over by a Night Rider. Deeper in the forest, there lies a Circle of Oaks, a grove of trees carved upon by wicked ritualistic symbols, and around them, lie the remains of a battlefield, many forgotten souls woven in the bloodied, rotten earth. Yet there was one tree in that hedge which catches dreaded attention, it towers above the others and buried its roots deep in the center of a dreamy grove, around it the fresh crimson painted soil, there the vultures feasted the most upon the departed.

The tree was a sickly-looking scarlet with large, strong roots sticking out of the ground with shapes of terrified faces trapped underneath. With ancient, twisted, dead branches extending out into the sky like bony hands, it has rightfully earned its folklore name “The Black Wood.” Unlike others, one could hardly mistake the evil aura surrounding the gloomy tree while many gravestones scar the dark earth around it. The crooked branches decorated with deceased remains and haven-ed by more vultures. The evil tree itself with a face, one of a forlorn expression, hollowed dark eyes set in the bark just above a fiendish maw that resembled a natural crack. There are figures of women, lean and pale, shaped into the trunk with frightened faces.

Suddenly a zephyr kicked up the leaves, and there was something like a great, dark phantom in the shape of an angel arising in the spot where the lightening had struck the blackened and evil-looking tree.

Sightless stood frozen to the spot watching as a fair face of living wood took shape from the mask-like feature and rose over 7 feet with the leaves flowing over limbs. Yet gazing around, lining the trees are glass doors, so far gone is the blackened heart of the harbinger harbored a charging carriage. A repeated tradition as the wailing woman wombs an embrace of the Black Matron. Breaking each barrier, each shattered window, the essence of a little girl. Crying to return to distant dreams. Woeful wails. Wanton whispers, searching for an ivory flame buried, seeking rebirth from a core of bloodied-black. And so, still beats a soul of a forest, but not a whole which is an abyss in the horsewoman's chest. Buried in a tomb, here, tells anguish and the earth has no sorrow. It knows no mercy for saint nor sinner. Beneath the sod is a heart of dust in its own grave that would rejoice as a black banshee with a chant, such a Sacred Shadow seeps sorrow in sojourned souls.

And thus the wheels of cruel cycles turn righteous. Each limber felled out of a hallowed-out husk of human and bonedust flew. Rising to the fiery stars and left a sweet fragrance floating in the fields. It was a sweet but subtle aroma of pine nor willow, but one from the long past that had been forgotten. High above and still was the tomb as the courtly spirit depicts the dead upon sacred cosmos as glistening ashes.

Maybe, too, all the statuettes could be destined to end the rebirth, but she knows, she knows that maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood kind of a flesh, and perhaps instruments of wood construction sound so pleasing to ears, The shimmer of a solemn savior, the heartbeat of a Great Mother, the mournful wail of a Long Night, and she loves them because they sound like them all, and so she rides on into midnight along the Night Run Road...

"As starry-sky bends, she rode down in a Midnight Chariot and carried the fallen dead away to be strewn across the night-sky as stars, leaving them to rest forever along their ancestors as skylight." - *Sagas of the Shal'alor 5:6-6*

Light above, as the dancing stars shined a bright white, and Darkness below, as the crying moon turned a shade black, which one found to be stunningly different than walking through the woods. In the sitting, the woods jumped to life with a spirited activity that one had scarcely ever seen or known to exist. And as one sat there turning this way and that in order to draw it all in, one thought that it was not the woods coming alive. Time had no place, no existence, no rule and rather, it was me coming to a halt...