Fear Overflows These Woods

676 words (excluding headlines)

To Help a Coward

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Looming over a gently pink pouflon, a rather lumbering furry-backed giant pouflon looked to his smaller comrade with a face of gratitude. "Ah, you know you're doing me a big favor, Luverne," the giant pouflon said.

"Why are you so thankful about showing your weakness to me?" Luverne replied.

"Now, now, now, no need to get sharp with me. All I ask is that you go in and battle those beasts for me. Don't ask why I went and took on a job from some vespire, I should've known it would get me into something like this," the giant groaned.

"You're saying that because it was a vespire?"

"Just help me, okay, and I'll give you that painting set. If you show up at my doorstep before you complete this task demanding it from me again, I'll--"

"Are you dare threatening me? Shall I drag you by your mane into that forest and let the monsters devour you?"

Having his frustration shattered by this jarring statement, the giant put all pride away and meekly murmured, "Thanks for helping me."

"What bravery left me behind?"

---

Making such an agreement those hours ago was a dreadful thought playing through Luverne's head as he started believing that coward would not go through with his promise. The dark didn't scare Luverne, it only aggravated him as it tried unnerving him with typical eerie sounds. However entering the heart of the pitch black woods started affected Luverne's deepest nerves. Instead of mysterious sounds hitting his ears, a rush of a river was echoing in the darkness, an enemy he didn't feel like facing today.

His feet wanted to stop, but his legs disobeyed and Luverne ventured deeper. Plagued with shadows of the past pulling away at the fur upon his stomach, Luverne felt the weight of the world adding up its demands of his debts towards it. His hair started flowing down, growing unnaturally fast. Water started flooding the small patches of grass beneath his toes.

There she stood before him. As ever so hideous with the illusion of being one of the most beautiful pouflons he could have ever devoted his life to, she dared show her face again. The malicious shadows of those woods all gathered together to form this criminal of the heart. She stood, with the same face of disgust as Luverne screamed at as she hurt him again and again.

"Your image floods my mind."

---

Enraged to see this pouflon in what appeared to be reality, Luverne wheezed, and he shuddered realizing he was surrounded by water. With how much there was, that criminal could damage him all over again. Trembling with fiery fear and fury, Luverne took control of the waters and blasted that ugly image of the past away.

Spooked by his own will over the waters, Luverne shrieked, "AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! WHY!" He didn't want this. He didn't need this. What did he need this for at all?

"Why, why, why, wHY?!" Luverne shouted, but his cries could not stop him from accidentally sending waves of water everywhere. "Terrible, terrible! She did this, she did this to me, she tuRNED ME INTO THIS!!!" Having enough, Luverne ran farther into the dark of the forest, being chased by his dreadful powers. Into an abandoned house, he tried shutting it out. He didn't want it!

Stepping backwards, his hooves sunk into a puddle. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Luverne jolted back, and the water followed his leap into the air. This control-- it had followed him. Streams of water floated through the house, joining drops of tears floating upwards. Hooves went flying into the side of a wooden wall, and what was left was the framework of that house. Bits and pieces of floral life that used to live was scattered all over the ground. The once beautiful grassy ground now looked to be a patchwork of dirt. Whatever nature used to be alive there, including the abandoned house redecorated by ivy, no longer lived. It was all gone, washed away by angry waters or torn away by furious teeth.

It looked as if a devastating flood had hit that place.