Chapter Text
“The heretics have prepared for battle! We must reclaim our holy land!”
“We can’t go in blind,” Kanaya whispers, “and keep it down, they’ll hear you!”
You narrow your eyes, crouching down behind the barrier. “So what if they do?” You ask, “Idiots like that could overhear our entire battle strategy and still be powerless against our superior and God given might.”
“Yes, but we want a battle, not a retreat, and the enemy is known for being rather . . . skittish,” Kanaya says, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
You roll your eyes in return.
“Well if we want a goddamn battle then why aren’t we attacking?”
“Point taken," Kanaya replies, adjusting her position and peering slightly over the barricade at the enemy forces, “Shall we?”
You lift the old basket in your arms, narrowing your eyes and nodding wordlessly at her. Your shoes dig into the mud as you prepare to charge at your foes. Kanaya’s gaze drifts from you to your targets, and she flexes her fingers at her sides, bending at the knees and hunching her shoulders.
“Go!” You shout, your voice cracking a bit as you push off of your feet toward the muddy pink piglet rolling in a puddle just a few feet away. At the sound of your voice and the scuffle of feet coming toward it the piglet starts, squealing fearfully and struggling to its feet to flee.
“No you don’t!” Kanaya cries, leaping forward in a vain attempt to grasp the slippery swine. It escapes her, causing her to slide through its muddy puddle bath on her chest, feet flailing behind her. She clumsily rises to her feet, standing in the middle of the dirt road with her front covered in grime and glaring after the fleeing piglet.
You run past her in pursuit, hearing her grumble something under her breath about “speedy little fuckers” before she catches up with you. The piglet crawls under a fence and you think you might have a chance to grab it before it gets to the other side, so you make the dive.
You completely underestimated the piglet’s wiggling speed and greet a fencepost face first. Kanaya then has the brilliant idea to use your back to give her a boost as she leaps over the fence after the piglet, calling back at you to get up and help her. You curse her and the piglet and all of swinekind as you crawl to your knees and try to find an easier way through the fence. It would be fantastic if there were a gate nearby, but that would just make things too simple wouldn’t it?
You finally give up and attempt to climb the fence, your short limbs making it a difficult endeavor, not to mention having to carry the basket along with you-but you only land flat on your ass in the dirt once before you successfully traverse to the other side! Good for you!
You balance the basket in your arms again and take off as fast as your legs can carry you, calling out to Kanaya for the location of your quarry. You hear no response and curse under your breath, turning on your heel and taking off in another direction, yelling for her again.
“This way!” She shouts back. Wow, how fucking helpful.
Nevertheless, you dash in the direction of her voice, thanking your various and sundry gods when you catch sight of her and the pink abomination. Still, if you keep going like this you’ll be chasing this little shit until the sun goes down. This calls for a better plan.
Kanaya is keeping up with it, but she won’t be catching up with it anytime soon. What you need to do is get ahead of it, but how? If you can just figure out where it’s going to go-
A brilliant plan strikes you.
“Kanaya! Chase that thing to the tailor’s!” You call out, making a sharp right.
You barely make it to the other side of the tailor’s house when you hear the frightened squeals of the piglet; Kanaya is gaining on it.
It doesn’t matter though; your brilliant plan has this thing in the bag--or basket, if you’d like to lose the metaphor for more literal accuracy. Putting that aside, you’re gonna nab the little shit.
You leap out from behind the building and toward the piglet, basket upturned above your head. The piglet barely has time to look scared before you’ve brought the basket down around it. Kanaya barely has time to stop. She doesn’t have any time to stop at all actually, and you all end up in a rather muddy and miserable pile.
At least you caught the fucker.
“And think,” Kanaya says when you’ve got the piglet back in its pin, “just four more to go!”
You've finally wrestled the last of the errant swine into submission, plopping it into the much-abused basket and preparing to deliver it to the pin with its siblings, when the bell tolls. You groan.
"Shit, it's today?"
Kanaya dusts off her skirt, shaking it to rid herself of caked on mud, and frowns.
"We won't make it on time if we bring the piglet back to the pen first."
You look down into the basket to see the piglet has curled up for a nap, exhausted from its vie for freedom. Looks like it's down for the count and longer.
"We'll just take it with us and bring it back after the ceremony is over. How much trouble can one stupid pig cause?"
The eyebrow she raises at you answers that question, but you really don't have much of a choice. Ceremony attendance is mandatory--especially now, in your case.
"Are you nervous?" Kanaya whispers to you when the two of you have safely meandered into the growing crowd. You don't spare the question more that a moment of thought.
"Hell no."
She looks taken aback, and wonders at your answer. You scoff in reply.
"You came back fine, right? No one's gone missing in that forest for years," You adjust the basket in your arms as a group of elders begin to gather behind a wooden pedestal, "the whole 'beast of the forest' thing is just a bunch of superstitious geezers running their mouths about a big wolf or some shit."
An older villager overhears you and glares, and Kanaya gives you a scolding shove before you can begin your tangent about the fear-mongering elderly. You roll your eyes, but stay silent as you pretend to pay attention to the ceremony in front of you.
This happens every three months; every villager at or over the age of fifteen has their names put in this special box to be drawn out at this ceremony, and whoever is selected is the designated link between the village and the world outside of the forest: they bring goods to outside markets, learn the news of the outside world, and make purchases to bring back to the village.
No one else has permission to leave the village but that person. Also they have to wear an obnoxious red hood and cloak whenever they go about because "tradition" and "agreements".
All because some old geezers got paranoid about a bigger than usual bear or wolf or something.
You turned fifteen a month ago.
Six months ago, Kanaya wore the hood.
And you know what happened to her? Jack shit.
You know how many awful horrible vengeful forest creatures she saw? Jack shit.
This whole ceremony is such a-
"Karkat Vantas!" A voice bellows over the nervous whispers of the crowd. Your head immediately jerks up to see one of the oldest and crustiest of the old crusty buffoons pointing a quivering grey finger at you. You barely suppress a groan and fail to suppress an eyeroll as you pass Kanaya the basket.
For a moment you meet her eyes, and there is worry in them. Your roll your eyes again.
The village elders, human and troll alike, raise an eyebrow at your mud-crusted attire, but say nothing about it. The "sacred" ceremony can be interrupted for nothing.
You look like a fucking jackass, everyone watching while you're anointed with sacred this and blessed with sacred that and repeat the sacred oath and get made up all sacred as fuck in your shitty sacred red cloak and God DAMN THIS IS STUPID.
The entire time you're being "anointed" and "purified" or whatever that weird smelly water is supposed to be doing, the elders warble out the tale of the great beast of the forest. You've heard it so many times that you catch yourself almost mouthing the words along with them.
"Legend" tells that long ago the village was much larger, and lived in harmony with the forest and its denizens, including a great and powerful creature that, though rarely seen, seemed quite benevolent.
On a day quite like any other, the villagers were struck with fear as the creature appeared before them, furious and terrifying. The villagers knew not what they had done to incur the creature's wrath, and many cowered helplessly beneath the angry being, who towered far above them and exuded a deep and powerful anger.
The creature demanded a villager come forth--a sacrifice to satisfy whatever wrong it deemed had been done to it, but the villagers refused to sacrifice one of their own. Instead, they attacked the creature, forcing it back into the forest from whence it came.
Still, they could not feel safe with the creature still living, and planned to smoke out the now weakened beast, and relieve the village from its terrifying shadow. They set many fires in the forest in an attempt to draw out the beast, and draw it out they did--but instead of a weakened creature, they were faced with an even angrier monster.
This time they knew they could not defend themselves from the wrath of the beast, and prostrated themselves before it, begging mercy, for they had only wanted to defend their village.
The beast was appeased by their begging, and promised not to harm their village or any of the villagers, on one condition:
The bounty of the forest, which the creature decreed to be its own, would no longer be freely given to the villagers. Instead, if they entered the great forest at all, they must stay strictly on the paths carved out for them.
Anyone who stepped so much as one foot from the path would belong to the beast.
What a fucking load.
The final words of the ceremony are spoken and you are given permission to go about your business and holy hell do you ever want to rip this fucking cloak off of your back, but there are aready villagers lining up with their requests.
With a bit of relief you notice that Kanaya is hanging back and waiting for you, but she still looks so fucking worried and you cannot believe your friend has bought into this crap.
Whatever, you'll be just fine and that'll prove to her that there's nothing to fear from the big bad wolf-or-other-large-fauna.
"I'm worried about you."
"No shit."
Kanaya gives you a look and you suddenly feel that it's in your best interest to shut your fucking mouth.
She sighs.
"I know you do not believe in the forest monster, Karkat--but please, do not let that make you reckless. Even if there is no monster, there are other things in that forest that could hurt you, so just do as the elders say and stay on the path."
You don't believe in the so-called monster. You think it's a bunch of bullshit hullaballoo asspulled from the crevices of a dendrophobic old curmudgeon so he could make other people go through the forest for him when he had shit that needed to be done, and it just got blown up by a bunch of brainless paranoid assmunchers.
You don't tell her that, because Kanaya has a way with an axe and while you know she would never turn it against you, she might find some of your stuff in need of remodeling.
"I will," you promise.
It's not like you have any reason to step off of the path, anyway.
There was basically no way that you weren't going to step off of the path.
You do, at least, wait until you're on your way back to the village to do so.
Your pack is laden with a few purchases and letters from a city outside the forest--you didn't get too many requests since it's your first time--and you're making your way back home as leisurely as possible because God knows your siblings will find a way to pawn off their chores on you the instant you get back. Not like the red hood and cloak give you any special status for them to respect--now you're just doing chores for a whole bunch of other people, why not them as well?
The forest isn't anything like the terrifying place the elders make it out to be--you've barely glimpse a squirrel along the path, much less a horrible hideous monster--and if the whole "legend" wasn't shit-your-pants stupid before it just seems like a load of watery wriggler feces now.
So, you think, what's the harm in stepping off the path a little?
You don't really have any reason to. You're not even curious as to what you might find in the forest beyond the path. Mostly you just want to do it because fuck the elders fuck the legend fuck the whole damn village tradition.
So you set one foot off of the path.
Nothing.
You scoff to yourself and lift your foot, preparing to set off toward the village again.
Then, dumbass that you are, you decide, "no, i'm gonna prove this bullshit wrong," and you set it back down, quickly following it with your other foot. Both feet are off the path now, and the forest feels a bit stiller and quieter than before.
You don't let it deter you. You set off through the thick trees with a smirk on your face and a swagger in your step. You're almost tempted to call out the so-called "monster" for not smiting you where you stand. You knew that whole legend was bullshit.
You so knew.
You are so face down on the ground with claws digging into your back and a heavy terrifying weight on top of you.
There is also a voice growling in your ear.
"How many more of you will break the rule before you learn?"
You are so fucked.