phywriter.com|Prone to occasional grandiloquence

Deep Magic’s April writing challenge is to help inhabit a new world, Kenatos, with monsters. The idea was to come up with an original monster “to thrill or terrify us” that didn’t owe to LotR or anything else stock.

johne cook
wisconsin, usa
april, 2004

Published in Deep Magic in the May, 2004 issue

From the Kenatos Bestiary

Background

The earliest Kenatine records detail two things, a legend, and a name.

Hunters seeking to fell the magnificent species of game in its dark glades were the first to discover this phenomenon. Their accounts detail how they came from near and far to see and kill the legendary animals but left with only nightmares to show for the journey (if they left at all). As men were less learned and more superstitious in those naive days, men came to avoid those woods leaving only the unspoken rumor – that the souls of men were harvested there. The ancient name stuck.

The Harvestine is a concept so strange that it challenges everything about us as men. Begin with language – is it “is” or “are”. Is it “it” or “he / she / them”. For that matter, it is animal or vegetable, spiritual or psychological?

What is known is very little and shrouded in whispers and frightened legends – the Harvestine phenomenon occurs in only one place, the dense forests west of Wayland between the swamps to the west and the mountains to the north. (That it is in such a remote location is fortuitous for us all.)

Once thought to be a place of madness, according to legend, the dank thicket of The Harvestine is said to emit a palpable dread that affects all men. It was undisturbed for centuries until men of faith and intellect gradually divined a series of deeper truths; one, while feeding the darker emotions of men, The Harvestine is not technically evil, and two, men *have* died by too much exposure to its influence, but that says more about the men that confined them there than The Harvestine itself.

The Account of Jophemus, Mentor

Jophemus himself made one last pilgrimage to confront the dark force in the Wayland Wood in a confrontation that served as the final event of his august history and provided us much of what is known about the dread phenomenon: on arriving at last in its presence, Jophemus at length parted the ethereal veil of depression and death (felt but not seen) that kept out the weak of mind and himself approached the blackest part of that dark forest to confront The Harvestine in person, willing to suffer and die if need be, but unwilling to leave without divining its nature.

What he discovered startled even this great man, steeled as he was.

This next conclusion is appended to Jophemus’ posthumous record and is the result of the combined efforts of many men and four decades work: it is thought that The Harvestine is a sprawling carpet of deepest green with a great many small nodules which each emit a faint yellow organic glow, giving The Harvestine the impression of having many thousands of sightless, unblinking eyes.

This is, perhaps, a defense mechanism, although its primary qualities stand to serve more than sufficiently in that regard, which is rendered by scholars in this way: the current theory is that each tiny green node contains a single discreet thought. While The Harvestine is not, strictly speaking, thought to be sentient, it is apparently capable of reading or broadcasting any of its harvested ideas a great distance around itself with considerable speed and echoes of thought, lapping like waves at the pool of memory.

Moreover, it appears to be able to choose between its store of stolen concepts and combine them in some strange harmony so as to represent (but not depict) intelligent thought.

To be clear, it strings together mental concepts but only mimics conversation.

In short, the singular characteristic of this phenomenon was to see the motivations of those who passing too nearly by, reaping those dark thoughts as a thresher would harvest wheat, and spinning them back in a cryptic rhythm of its own rendering.

As no man is truly pure in heart, no man escaped its notice or its judgement (a spiritual pun). Even stranger, God’s creatures seem to ignore it (at worst) or appear are seemingly energized by its presence (at best), thus both bringing (and repelling) the aforementioned hunters.

After spending an incredible duration with The Harvestine, even a mind and spirit like that of Jophemus was overcome and he succumbed to its dark messages. However, Jophemus was a scholar and accustomed to observation, and had the foresight to strap himself to his trusty burden-beast. This clever animal detected his slumping form and the tightening bonds and left The Harvestine to steadily return to the villages outside the wood. Once there, Jophemus was recovered and revived by his assistant long enough to convey his encounter, after which he proceeded to die in the young stalwart’s arms.

His famous assistant (whom we all know by his many later adventures) was instructed not to move until he had committed his entire account to the scrolls (a feat he immediately accomplished, amid much weeping). Strangely, the wise one had died with a wistful boast upon his lips, that he had lasted twenty incredible minutes in the presence of that awesome identity, but could have easily gone forty if he were a callow youth again.

This heresy is a source of much debate among the Brethren for which there is no consensus even these many hundreds of years later.

Today, there is a spartan whisper that some visit The Harvestine as a sort of oracle. This has not been confirmed, but if true, we are confident that no more than three souls alive today would attempt it, and two would have trumpeted this knowledge to the hills if successful. As a result, this rumor is considered to be without critical merit in these modern times.

Many contemporary thinkers discount the legend of The Harvestine but the fact remains that, to this day, no man treads the dark woods west of Wayland. If asked, the locals suggest that is because there is no reason to venture there, however, this poor servant of Our Lord God does not accept that explanation at face value and can not, in good conscience, recommend that school of thought without further investigation.

Conclusion:

We have this much information left us; the legendary Jophemus, so hale and wise, died shortly after leaving those woods, and there is no recorded evidence of any man returning whole from there, since.