Steem Monsters Common Card Fantasy Story Contest! // Week 3 - The Haerij's shout

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The Haerij's shout

  The echo of heartbreaking cries reverberated in his bruised head as he recovered from the unexpected sleeping; he began to remember now how his father hit him from the back, leaving him unconscious, when he was preparing to fight, along with the rest of the men of the town, the five Spineback Wolves who had appeared out of nowhere attacking his village. He wished with all his might that it had been only a nightmare; he straightened up, shook off all the straw that buried him, and staggered to the door of the barn; the smell of blood and death next to the desolation that he saw everywhere left him breathless, confirming his worst hunches.

  As a child he had heard legends about the Spirit of the Forest and while he repeated and reviewed them all again and again to himself, threw vehemently the small wagon that was carrying his late father. He traveled a long way pushing and soaked, both in sweat and tears, until finally he found the entrance to the leafy and dark forest, entering it without hesitation in search of the mysterious spirit that could give life back to his beloved father.

  The cart rolled slowly while Haerij walked with caution, attentive to all those endless sounds that seemed to conspire against him and his forced calm, inside the forest.
  After hours of walking and with a certain confidence in himself, he began to shout.
  ―Spirit of the Forest! I need you! Come to me! ‒was screaming over and over.
  A mischievous laugh began to sound behind a tall hedge.
  ―Who's there? ‒said Haerij faltering.
  After an impressive jump with pirouette, a short being of the same color as the olive hedge, stood in the middle of the path that followed the cart.
  ―For the Spirit of the Forest you asked and here you just found me ‒lied in a shrill voice the Goblin Sorcerer.
  ―People say that you are capable of resurrecting those who possessed a good heart in life with the magical energy of the forest ‒he said hopefully.
  ―That's right, young human... ‒said between sharp laughs barely containable‒, but I will need a valuable object with which to be able to cast the spell.
  Haerij tore off the silver medallion without thinking twice and handed it to the goblin with his hands stained with dried blood.
  The glint of silver gleamed in the pupil of the snout green sorcerer, and then disappeared without a trace.
  The uncertainty gave way to amazement when, within a few minutes of disappearing the small being, they began to arrive, where was standing Haerij, countless small animals and insects, surrounding and climbing up his body.
  He felt that he was starting to get dizzy because everything around him was spinning at increasingly frenetic speeds: the trees seemed to fall and merge with the shifting ground that turned and turned; he began to scream, but not from fear but from pain, when he began to feel himself melting and mingling with the mud of the ground, with the fragments of fallen trees, with the matter also of the animals and insects that had surrounded him and with the body of his deceased father.

  Hidden in his magical hiding place, the Goblin Sorcerer watched with rejoicing how an imposing jumble of organic and inorganic matters was conforming to the colossus of flesh that acquired monumental proportions.
  The screams ceased and what was once Haerij was now partly himself, partly his father and partly the forest itself.

  ―Your father's heart is already beating inside you, just like the magic of the forest, Flesh Golem; from now on, you belong to the forest and you will take revenge for what the Spineback Wolves did to you, fighting against the Dead ‒ordered the little sorcerer.

  The bestial shout that the Flesh Golem uttered, that seemed to last an eternity, shook in flock both birds and the rest of the animals that heard it, in a few kilometers around.

  That day there was no trace of the legendary Spirit of the Forest.

Text for the front of the card

  The heart of his father and the magic of the forest beat inside this colossal mass of muscular flesh. His bestial war cry increases the morale of the allied troops and will not cease fighting until he has obtained revenge.