"We are nothing but children wearing the clothes of our dead parents. We look into the mirror and see faces we no longer recognize."
-Juniper Ito

Judas had left The Forest for a reason. It was greedy, evil, and above all else an unnatural thing. As a child he remembered the blue blue colors of the sky, and the green, green grasses of the valleys. Not the choking canopy and sickly bramble. That had come after.

After...

He broke through a heavy thicket of ivy, gasping as sunlight washed over him in a warm, gentle wave. He blinked back tears, staring up at the small patch of sky, tiny clouds drifting lazily overhead. So he'd made it after all. The center of The Forest.

Judas wiped the dirt and debris he'd collected off of his scraggly beard, fingers brushing over the scar Esther had left him on his cheek. He cinched up his bag, feeling the heavy lump dig into his shoulders, and knew the time had finally come.

Steeling himself, Judas pressed on towards the Tower. It stood in the very epicenter of the clearing, a rod of dark, cursed earth shaped by the hands of the Old Gods long ago and left forgotten. It sank into the earth on four mighty claws, rising up as one twisted obelisk, its dark, unblemished surface practically drinking in the light.

Judas winced. It hurt to stare at the Tower. Eventually he forced himself to look away towards the ground, strange visions swirling in his eyes, making ghostly patterns in the grass.

Off in the distance, a figure emerged from one of several yawning portals at the base of the Tower. They were dressed all in white, a wild mass of horns growing out of their head, one coiling in on itself and puncturing an eye socket. Judas would have been disgusted by this, but he had grown used to such horror. He'd known it all his life.

"Brother," The Hornsent spread its hands out, its voice a grinding bleat.

"Paul," Judas said coldly. "Where are the children?"

"Really? Even now, even after all these years, you still wish to deny your true heritage? Do you truly deny me, littler brother?"

"I'm tired, Paul. I lost a lot of good people trying to get here. Just tell me where they are and I'll leave."

Paul clasped his hands together, lips split wide in a terrifying grin. Instead of molars, a multitude of razor sharp canines, flat bottom grinders, and crooked incisors greeted him instead.

"I can assure you the children are unharmed."

"That's fine. Now give them back."

"As you wish, but I doubt they'll want to leave. They've been having so much fun since our flock brought them here."

Judas felt a cold knife slither down his spine. "What are you talking about? What did you do?"

"Oh, I did nothing." Paul gazed up towards the Tower, the air around it seething and writhing like heat from a mirage. "It was the Old Gods who finally uplifted them. Giving them the means to truly live as equals in this world."

Footsteps echoed from the yawning portal in the Tower Paul had emerged from. A multitude of them, tiny feet scraping along the stones, tiny figures emerging from the darkness.

Judas took a step back, the cold shiver along his back becoming an icy fist in his guts. It was the Woodlin children, or at the very least what little remained of them. They marched and clambered towards him in a mass of ugly bruises, puckered scar tissue, and bent limbs, empty mouths babbling and sputtering incoherent nonsense. They tripped and fell over on themselves, wobbling on stilted legs, sausage like fingers grasping and gripping for any solid purchase.

Many of them had been shaved, raw, pink flesh glistening in the sunlight. Others had been altered far more drastically. Judas recognized some of them as Esther's children, their needles viciously ripped out, pink stained bandages still oozing along their backs. All of them had their beady, black eyes cut out and replaced with the unnatural colors of green and blue and brown.

The children gathered around Paul, tugging at his robe, reaching out to him as if he were some kind caretaker. He smiled, patting one of them on the head, stroking its smooth, bald scalp.

"What have you done to them?" Judas demanded.

"I already told you," Paul said. "I have done nothing. It was the Tower that changed them. It made them better."

"You mutilated them!"

"Is that what you see the Old God's gift as? A form of mutilation? Have you truly forsaken the fold so easily, little brother?"

"Stop calling me that!" Judas threw his sack on the ground. "I left The Forest for a reason, remember? To get away from this madness, but you went too far, Paul. You told me you'd stay within the bounds of The Forest. You broke the oath. "

Paul shrugged. "Don't blame me. The Tower demanded more bodies for ascension. How is any of this my fault?"

"Because you kept listening!" Judas reached down, fumbling through his pack till his hands rested around the cold, heavy lump he'd carried the entire way here.

"And what will you do about it?" Paul demanded. "The Tower made this forest! So it could reach out and devour this world for its own purposes! Who are we to deny it? Who are we to question such a thing made by the Old Gods themselves? We should be lucky to have been granted the intelligence needed to realize such greatness in the first place!"

Judas frowned. "I'm going to stop you. I can't save the children like I promised, but I'll fix this. For Peter's sake. For everyone's sake."

Paul's mad grin grew wider. The children around him began to mewl and squeak, their little faces like tinier versions of the wicker giant. "You are a fool, little brother. You cannot hope to sway the other Forest Folk to turn against me. Not even the Woodlins will take you back now that you've failed them. What do you hope to accomplish by yourself?"

Judas stood back up, unwrapping the ehavy lump from its cloth casing, letting the fabric drop away. In his hands, polished to a mirror shine and kept in meticulous condition, was a weapon of the Old Gods.

Paul took a wary step back, his smile quickly melting away. "Where did you get that?"

"I found it," Judas admitted. "Took me three years to find one in good working order. Ironic, that I would find it in the same Woodlin's village you attacked. They were using it as a nutcracker before they converted to the Mother and tried to burn it. I was able to steal it from the ashes once they'd all left satisfied."

The children gathered tightly around Paul now, clutching at him as they eyed the mysterious artifact in Judas' hands. The handle gleamed a bright red in the sunlight, the word RIDGID embossed along the surface. The head was more akin to a club, save for the hook-like claw protruding out, rigid teeth carved along one side. A tiny mechanism at the side allowed for the hook to rise and lower as seen fit.

"And what do you plan to do with such a thing?" Paul asked.

Judas sighed, tightening his grip around the weapon. "I'm going to do what I was made for." He took a step toward Paul, then another, and another, advancing on him slowly, in order not to spook him.

"And what would that be, little brother?" Paul forced himself to keep smiling, his wide grin now a quivering, little smirk.

Judas smiled for him. He was so close now. So close he could smell his brother's sweat, his brother's fear. He lifted up the weapon, its gleaming head catching in the sunlight. "Sending you to the Old Gods. Just like all the rest."

And before anyone else could protest, Judas brought the weapon down and smashed his brother's skull in.

The air split apart with the screams of the children as they tried to run, tried to flee, but they were too slow, too clumsy, too new to the limitations of ascension. One by one, their cries were snuffed out until Judas stood alone before the Tower.

He stared up at the demonic obelisk, the air thrumming around it in what could only be amused laughter. He grit his teeth, knowing of the great work that lay ahead, and knowing what the cost would be to get there.

"Back to the Mother," he muttered to himself as he limped into a yawning portal at the base of the Tower, the treacherous darkness within swallowing him up whole.