What is he?

The catalyst. Stealer of fire, eater of moons.

But he gave an offering. A book for the Salamander. What is his worth?

He is not human. He cannot leave. He must follow the rules.

We are not human. We can leave. We do not follow the rules.

The swarm skitters through the Rootways, tending to the infinite crevices that hold the Forest together.

He must not be touched. His role is yet to be played.

A leviathan mind breaks through the multitudinous thoughts. It swims down the river of Ants, caressing each one, loving each one as its children.

Must not be touched! Must not be touched! An actor for the play! A role yet to be completed!

The Ants began to circle, a gigantic formation that covered the endless tunnels. So big and so hidden that nothing but their master could see it. A tree is uprooted, a flashlight is stolen, a torch is put out, a dead guardian is dismantled and returned to ash. The Forest lives under the guidance of the Ants, under the will of their collective mind.

They circle around the Forest’s center, itself  a misnomer, for how can a place with no edges have a center? The center resonates with the darkness, its tortured mind breaking the Dark Forest into pieces and moving them. Sap oozes from its wounds, and the Ants listen as it screams in rage, defiance, loss and hate.

A role to play. A cycle to complete. We will help.

The fire must continue.

The Salamander must live! It must survive!

The Salamander listens to all of this from within its fire. It doesn’t understand. It doesn’t know what’s coming. It whimpers and buries itself deeper in the ash of the Campgrounds. As it does, another guardian digs its way out of the fabricated undergrowth, roaring its complaints about being born into the world. The Ants swarm over it, removing plant matter and soil. It is cleaned, and then begins its lumbering patrol.

Another sentinel. We will maintain.

The Ants followed the creature beneath the surface as it walked, its thundering footsteps jolting them with each impact.

Will he succeed?

Will we remember this time?

Has he succeeded?

Of course he has.

The Dark Forest’s titanic thoughts echoed through the tiny minds of its trillion-fold family. There was an indisputable certainty in it that brooked no argument. It knew the play by heart, and it would play its part.

An intruder. It was deep in a forest from another world. The entity reached across space and plucked it into an echo that formed around them.

The rules must be followed. The prison must be maintained. The guards must be dispatched.

Beasts of every description began to move towards the intruder. Monsters straight out of mankind’s oldest stories, and a few that they hadn’t even seen. Things with wings and claws and mandibles and teeth, all out to end the intruder’s life.

It was all a farce of course. The Dark Forest was bored. It had been stealing things from other worlds for centuries on end, hoping to find a way to end its boredom. Sometimes a guardian would be felled. Sometimes the intruder would make it all the way to the Campgrounds. Sometimes they would even make it out. The rules would be broken, and the guardians that had broken them would be returned to ash. It didn’t matter. There were always new stories, and new monsters to pull from.

It only had two roles for itself, and it had been playing them for longer than it knew it had existed. 

The role of the prison warden it once enjoyed. It was easy to kill the things that might free its charge, and it was an easy way to spite the monster it contained. It was too easy though, and after eons of attempts, it had begun to slip. It let things through. It wanted to see what would happen.

The role of the conductor it took more seriously. It had to, for its own life depended on it. It required a light touch, but after all of this practice it was more than capable of holding back its brutish tendencies and monstrous strength. It was all dependent on one single moment.

The Ants began to break down the botanist’s hut. Splinters were rearranged, and the woody interior resealed. The glass was returned to its frame, and the rope that held the door reweaved. To an outside observer it would have looked like time was being reversed, but the hourglass inside continued to trickle sand.

How long? How long?

Its children begged for answers.

Too long. And we will watch longer still.

Will he succeed? Will he fail?

Yes. As always. The fire must continue. She must wake up.

She was the whole reason for the second role. She was why the fire hadn’t died yet. She had to remain here for all eternity.

The world intelligence tugged on the binding moments of similarity between this realm and those that it connected. A forgotten home would go missing. A desert grove would vanish into the heat haze. Ghostly trees would appear and disappear to other places. To those who had studied the Dark Forest, it had another name: The Thieving Woods.

Will we remember this time?

It broke the Forest’s heart to lie to its flock. They were so precious, ready to believe in the necessity of their role.

You will all remember this time.

Around the Dark Forest’s eternal trees, the Ants lost some of the electric jitter that had been passing through them. They moved with purpose. They were required. They were necessary.

And they were wrong.

A shudder ran through the winds of the Forest, leaving an uncomfortable heat in its wake. This was necessary. IT required it to keep the cycle repeating. But why was it necessary? After all this time, was simple continuation all that could be strived for? Was there nothing else?

The monstrous attention of the Dark Forest fragmented, sinking into the eyes of the Ants all around it. It made it easier to deal with the boredom.

What happens after she wakes?

There it was. The question that always appeared near the end. The entity sank deeper into the collecting consciousness of the realm’s most numerous guardians. No answer came. No answer would come. It had already tried telling them once, and that had nearly ended its own life. Even as powerful as it was, the shadowy forest still feared its own death. It wouldn’t betray that secret again so easily.

And so it continued to watch the night wind’s progress through the gaps of its flesh.