Smoke curled and twisted through the forest stinging and singeing, my eyes and nostrils so that I had to partially cover my face with the end of my cloak as I squinted through the gossamer veil moving under the shadow of The Pan. I knew he was at some disadvantage. The burning of the smoke would dull his senses as well and he would not pick up my scent as easily as he would without the intervening proximity of the forest fires. The same would be true for the satyrs. Though swift and of a nasty and vicious disposition, they relied upon their animal instincts far more than that of their human ones. The Pan was ancient. Time had ravaged him. He relied on his attendant retinue far more than he had in the past, though he would never let on. Age had finally left its traces: His shaggy hair was black and gray–Black with soot, but grayish-white with age. His eyes were clouded with bluish-white cataracts, and he was nearly blind. His hearing was dulled–though still greater than human–it was not as attuned as it once had been. His hooves were worn down so that only thick calluses kept the tender pads of his feet from contact with the rough ground. His voice had become more guttural as age tightened his vocal cords and added a rasping grate to his speech. His strength of limb and ligament had also weakened making his movements more ponderous and lumbering rather than lithe and swift.
Only his intellect remained sharp and savage.
And his hatred for the children of men had fed upon years and years of resentment both towards them, and towards the One who loved them and imprinted upon them His image. And that made him dangerous.
I knew that he watched and was obsessed with the Surface World that they had quitted long ago—Back when his form was comprised of only human flesh alone. But he had chosen this, though he’d been severely warned against it. The Surface World had no naturally occurring blend of animal and man flesh. Much as one might seek for transitional forms, these hybrids were without precedent. Once quitted, the Surface World had no place for what they’d become or his kind.
He had not heeded the dire warnings of the patriarchs. He had followed the mysterious Nomad. Had seen him vanish into the sun touching the horizon. He’d assumed that the Nomad had been granted access back into Edenu and would reach the Tree that would grant them all immortality. And the Tree that had given them the curse of death. He’d wanted to be made a god at any cost. To offer appeasement to the God of his fathers, by bringing the ram into the place of the sun. He wanted it ALL that was promised to the family matriarch for himself and his posterity. He demanded it. And that was why he’d been named Pan—a word that survived its journey through antiquity into the Latin dialect, meaning the same as had its proto-original word—Pan (Πάν) – All (πᾶν).
Since the path through the Throne Room of all the Heavens had been shut and guarded by the wielders of the holy flames, he still believed they would eventually find another way. Another means of access to gain audience and demand of the God of Heaven to deliver upon the promise made by the fiery serpent god, The Draco. The Draco had been acting as an emissary and had made those promises on behalf of the One. Draco, himself had been betrayed. Trapped in the form he took to deliver the message and bound to the Surface World. It had taken some time before The Draco was able to free himself from the form. Both Draco and Pan had become convinced that perhaps they had not understood the ultimate good purposes of the One, but eventually, they would. And their patience in this their misunderstanding would eventually pay off and be rewarded by the One. So, he’d served The Draco, faithfully having surrendered his humanity to become The Half standing upon two worlds. He would act as a stand-in emissary to receive and deliver the worship of man into The Draco’s hands to be carried up continually into The Presence of The Most High. So that one day He would relent from His curse and restore all worlds into balance and set him up as a Prince among the gods under heaven. This, I knew to be Pan’s self-deception. The Draco was, in fact, the primal enemy of us all. The one who, in his own hubris, thought to make himself equal to The One who is above everything, and led an ancient uprising against The Most High, even to the point of sweeping a third of the stars with him in his revolt. The Draco, before he became thus left his role as the “shining one” to coax, woo and lure a serpent with crafty words into a portal and there seize, indwell and cohabitate its body and mind to then re-enter the world of men. I also knew that anyone serving it in any capacity was being used for his own ends.
When The Most High eventually decreed through Moses that He would have no other gods before Him and codified it in stone, it had been a nasty blow. He’d wanted to strangle Hanokh for ever granting to mankind the gift of a written language, where such a decree could be preserved as a testimony for generations that would follow after. But Hanokh’s life was preserved and protected. Unlike himself, Hanokh’s body showed no such signs of aging. Though he had entered the Mid-World ahead of Pan, and walked the same Mid-World lands as he and those who had followed after, Pan feared him. He talked a lot of hunting and killing Hanokh, but deep down knew he never would carry that out. Hanokh was appointed for something that would happen in the future in the Surface World of mankind. A world in which he knew he would never be able to return to without being ripped in half and arriving in severed pieces of what had been left when he’d departed. Longing for that return to the land of his fathers was pointless. He was now a creature of the Mid-World, ever to remain as such. But that did not mean he could not wield influence within the homeworld he had quitted. And the Draco had shown him how. If The Most High would not deliver upon the promise made to his family of achieving godhood, the Draco would.
***
Upon the road, Miray, Begglar, Nell, Laura, Dominic and James, Matthew, Mason, Lindsey, Tiernan, and Christopher watched as Mr. O’Brian faded into the haze, silhouetted against the ghostly backlight towards the towering shadow of what O’Brian had identified as The Pan creature. They saw the flicker and crackle of the light of the sword he carried behind his body and hoped that it would prove to deter and counter this spectral threat, blocking their way ahead. Begglar stood at the point position of the company, now seeming to take charge in a way that he had, heretofore, shrunk back from.
Begglar had distracted Miray from looking overhead and seeing the grisly, dangling display of vines and heads swaying above them in the wafting smoke. She didn’t need to see that, and the others in the company recognized what Begglar was doing to keep her focus away from these things and they refrained from commenting or drawing attention to them as well. Laura too felt delighted and refreshed by Miray’s exuberance and unapologetic honesty. And she was prepared to fiercely protect it, as necessary. What others hadn’t seen when they all reunited on the road, was the exchange that happened between them. Miray had bounded up to her and then paused with a crooked smile. “I remember you. You’re Laura.” Laura stared at the little girl, amazed that she would remember her or even take notice. She had smiled and said, “Yes, I came back.” Miray twirled from side to side, dipping her toe out and then wrinkled her nose and said, “I think you need a bath.” Disarmed by the forthright honesty of this child, Laura laughed, “I’m sure I do.” Miray reached up and twirled a strand of her hair in her fingers and said, “I want to hug you, too, but can I wait until after?” Laura smiled, looked up thoughtfully and said, “Only if you promise you will when I get washed up.”
Miray beamed, turned on her heel and bounded away into the group. Laura, shook her head, smiling from ear to ear and reminded herself, what O’Brian had said to her earlier, “Family. I think I’m gonna like it here.” Such an unpretentious moment given freely by a sweet little girl. Whatever threatened her, Laura would fight with all her might.
Begglar had reattached the reaper blade to his staff, and he looked formidable and ominous bearing it forth against the threat that could come upon them at any moment. It had been many years since Begglar had encountered The Pan, and, if memory served, the man-creature was even then crooked and stooped by age and wear. He’d been thickly built, and both Begglar and others had estimated that The Pan had at one time stood at least eleven feet tall, by the English standard, and three and one-third meters by the Metric measure. Its human half had once been very muscled and powerful, but age had diminished it until he was leaner than it had been, though its wooly legs amid thick salt and peppered fur still seemed thickly powerful, as if reserved for a lunge at his enemies. Begglar had seen The Pan only one time lose its sinister cool and take part in the physical threat he typically wielded through others under his command. And that rage had been terrible and brutal, and bloody. O’Brian had witnessed it too, and Begglar hoped that O’Brian still held that terrible memory in mind as he approached The Pan even now. Though The Pan was ancient, one should never think that they could get too close to it. The Pan was unpredictable, and one could never be fully certain whether they were entirely dealing with the human side of him or the raging animal.
***
The Faeries had zipped away through the trees, headed to the southern end of the forest, and as she was preparing to leave with Will and return back to the road through the wood, she froze when she saw a flying shadow pass over one of the breaks in the forest canopy. Though the sighting had been brief she recognized the form immediately and had stopped Will from rising. A harpy. Another of the creatures of the Half-Men races in the kingdoms of The Pan. Never had she seen these creatures venturing this far and this close to human territories. The fact that she’d once again seen Faeries returning to the woods of Kilrane after all these years was surprising, but to see both Faeries and satyr prints and a harpy together in the same proximity signified that these were strange times. Both satyrs and harpies were mortally afraid of the Faeries and had they known there had been several spotted here, usually would have caused both to rapidly leave the environs of the wood. This strange development gave her pause. The only possibility that she could come up with was that neither the satyrs nor the harpies were aware of the return of the Faeries back into the woods of Kilrane. When Maeven finally turned to get Will, she saw additional evidence that a further division of the Half-men races also occupied the forest. Dryads. Their yellow pheromone dust powdered the leaves of the bushes under which Will had taken cover. Strange times indeed. Three races of Half-Men in one wood, each of which was extremely antagonistic to the other, drawn into one place. A microcosm of what lay ahead, if Corimanth was correct, that the mysterious drawing of the Builder Stones was forcing the human races towards conflict as well. Inexorably precipitating a war among the races of man. She knew they could waste no further time. They had to get out of these woods and fast. The presence of so many Half-Men races together in one place could only mean one thing. The Pan was somewhere in the forest. And their party was walking straight into a trap on the road ahead. She dove under the ferns to quickly grab Will, only to see him being hauled up into the canopy by a dryad.
***
Dryads were mostly female. Of the few males that survived the passage of the ancient portal, there were only two still breathing Mid-World air. Sylvanius and Polonius. These The Pan kept a tight rein on, almost making them prisoners, yet deceiving them into thinking they were free. The Pan used them as leverage against the desires of the more powerful female Dryads of certain Mid-World forests. As long as the Dryad females did his bidding, The Pan granted them access to their few surviving males.
As mentioned before, the Dryads were obsessed with finding a way to transform back into their human forms again. And they strove to use sex as a means of achieving this. They had taken captives from among the men of the Mid-World but never were able to get pregnant by them. And they killed these in their frustrations and adorned their lairs with the dangling heads of their conquests.
They desperately needed their males, but The Pan had reduced their population over the centuries when he used them for his own purposes in forest warfare. Something had happened that made the dryad females predisposed to having only girls and rarely ever producing males. An unforeseen consequence that The Pan had not intended.
To the dryad female mind, they believed that if they could capture and mate with a Surface Worlder male, rather than the Mid-Worlders and also mate with one of their males, and then together ingest the blood of the Surface Worlder human male, that combination would produce their desired seed, gradually becoming once again more human with each succeeding generation. But the humans of both the Mid-World had learned that there were dark purposes being served in the Mid-World forests, and they tried to avoid those woods where dryads had been sighted. And very few Surface Worlder’s came through the Mid-World anymore, and when they did they were warned to stay clear of forests with a possible dryad infestation. But with both dryad male populations dwindling, and The Pan restricting the females from accessing them, even the population of females began to wane.
Instead, they (Mid-Worlders) looked for forests rumored to be the domain of another mysterious creature.
The Dryads, like many other of the Half-Men creatures, were terrified of the Faeries, so they fearfully avoided places where they believed the Faeries were present. The Forests of Kilrane, stretching below and surrounding the hidden city of Azragoth, had traditionally been a site avoided by the Dryads, and so it was one of those desirable places for mankind to build near and dwell within. But Faeries had not been seen in the Mid-World for many, many years, and naturally, the threat of them began to wane, even among the Dryads, so that little by little they made incursions into Kilrane, and when left unchallenged, became bolder about their presence over the years. Many dryad females then brokered a deal with The Pan, that they would serve as his retinue warriors, spies, and attendants, serving even his carnal desires, if he would allow them the proximity to the male dryads he kept in his forest courts. But then the Xarmnians showed up and declared their rule and threatened the dryads with setting fire to the forests where they remained. Many land and forests were burned in this Xarmnian war to root out The Pan and his Half-Men. Deep-seated resentments remained because of it, and it was only recently when the Xarmnians finally decided to change their tactics and offer a peace deal with The Pan and his subjects. They would establish their domains and give each safe passage if respect and due homage and permissions were granted by the leaders. The Xarmnians would not encroach on The kingdom lands of The Pan, and The Pan would not molest the Xarmnians in their rulership, nor meddle in their affairs, or take Xarmnian prisoners nor kill and eat them, provided the Xarmnians did not violate the accord. But with the return of Surface Worlders coming back again into the Mid-World all that changed. The Pan and his Half-Men creatures had designs for the Surface Worlders, and the Xarmnians viewed them as hostile to their rule and dangerous and subversive interlopers upsetting the balance of power.
***
Shelberd tugged at the pack line, and Bunt balked at the rope rubbing into his skin on his flank as he struggled to gain footing in the soft peat mossy soil around the wood slough. Grum-blud grunted as he was pulled from the sucking black mud that mired his clothes, and arms. When he’d finally come free of the muck, the mud made a bubbling wet-popping noise, reluctant to free their prisoner.
Dob had been extracted with much less trouble, for the ratio of water to mud from where he’d entered was weighted more on the wet than the muck. When finally, Grum-blud lay upon the soft shore, he struggled to free himself from the greasy rope that had cinched too tightly and restricted his breathing. Shelberd released the rope and came trotting over to help Grum-blud but only received a cuffing for his well-meant efforts and when Grum-blud had found his feet again, he grabbed Shelberd by one of his prodigiously large ears and pull him close into a threatening position.
“If you ever leave your post, when I tell you to stay put, again. You’d better hope I don’t catch up to you. Do you hear me now, or shall I tear off this ear and keep it with me as a reminder to you?!”
Shelberd whimpered, as Grum-blud’s fist twisted his ear with such severity, that he could not answer without crying out.
“Yes, yes, yes! Ooo!” he croaked, “Never again! Never again, boss!”
Grum-blud released Shelberd’s ear and shoved him away, and then turned upon the onocentaurs.
“And as for you…!” he stomped forward and both Bunt and Dob retreated to a distance, fearing what the angry Troll might do to them.
But Grum-blud did not get to finish the statement before it parked and skidded to a stop on his snarling fat lip.
Beyond the two onocentaurs, standing tall amid a bevy of wickedly smiling satyrs, stood the tall ominous form of The Pan, sniffing deeply at the air, and then turning gleaming eyes downward to Grum-blud and the cowering form of Shelberd, ducking behind Grum-blud.
The onocentaurs slowly turned their eyes to where Grum-blud was staring and gaping.
Dob flinched and started.
A deep voice, seeming to begin from underground and rumble upward, vibrating through the roots of the towering trees and up through their feet and legs before registering as sound in their ears spoke to Grum-blud from the deeper forested edge of the black watered slough.
“Ahh, Xarmnian frog, how pleased I am to find you. We were coming to celebrate yours and our victory over the infested earth walkers occupying our forests. From a distance, we saw the fires. Tell me now, how stands the city of Azragoth? And for my sake, please don’t leave out a single bloody detail.”
The onocentaur named Bunt couldn’t help himself. He dropped a manure bomb.
—
Additional Notes:
For further reading and reference regarding the source myths of the Greek traditions and prior traditions to the Greco-Roman periods:
Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(god)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymph
Excavatia 