The rotten corpses of the trees' children crunched beneath me and my eyes widened in terror at what stood before me. There was a tinge of pride as the first one of my kind to actually venture into The Savage Forest, but it is swallowed by how scared I am. Even the air seems against me, seemingly full of Novocaine and every breath I take feels like it is bringing me nearer to collapsing in a heap. And if the tales of this forest are true, I would probably never wake again. The trees are knarled and twisted, with hardly any life flowing through them, except for the leaves left on the branches, but even they are black with pollution. I stand frozen to the spot, stone-cold in the sight of this utterly frightening, but mysterious view. However the more I stand there, the more my lungs seem to clog up with the air around me. I choke on my breath and hear a crack of a twig breaking in the distance. A short scream follows and my eyes widen to what I see in front of me. There, standing innocently holding onto a tree branch was a child no older than four. She has mud-stained locks of black hair hanging down her face and is wearing a pair of khaki dungarees and a black t-shirt. Her skin was brown and green with the stains of grass and mud. I wondered why she was here; no civilian had ever thought about leaving the presence of Zena-Zla. However my curiousity soon turns to horror as I see the real reason why she's here. A vine. It may not seem like a lot, but when it climbs down the knarled surface of the pine tree and runs across her face, thoughts run through my head. Is she controlling it? Is it controlling her? She walks towards slowly and presses a smooth hand to my face. My eyes dart from her face to the rest of the wood that seems to be swirling and twisting. My focus then goes to her face again and her pupils flood into the rest of her eyes until they are blackened. I can't help but emit a deafening scream at this situation before my eyes. She holds her ears and pulls back, then glares at me with raven eyes. Ferociously, she hisses at me on all fours and rushes off into the distance, but before she is completely out of sight, she whispers in a hoarse voice, "Beware, the things closest to you here are the things that make you hated".

I lean against a nearby pine tree and mull over the words she said. However the more I stand there, the more the thick air irritates my lungs. I cough loudly and slide to the ground. Reaching out to the side for something to breathe into, my hand reaches a brittle bone on the ground. I look towards it and see a skeleton, broken in some places and with mud-caked bones. A large crack is in its skull and an arrow pokes out of its eye socket. It mirrors my situation in some ways. I just hope I don't end up in the same way. I choke on the air once more, but my lungs just run out of air and everything turns to black.