Echoes

Some say the pursuit of knowledge is bound to eventually drive one into madness. He thought it was a fancy saying, but all madness Gael has ever encountered in his life was derived from a lack of thought, and all those who believed the saying were, in his experience, simpletons more often than not. However, could the pursuit in itself be madness?
They left at dawnbreak, and none of them expected that the search would drag on well into the night. A cold autumn wind blew fiercely from time to time during the day, sending waves through the thick chestnut sea of the fallen leaves. It was a truly special sight at sunset, if you didn't mind the rotting corpses that hanged nearabout.
Now they were walking under the cloak of darkness though, so it was just bloody cold.
He looked at his lamp, his only source of guidance that moonlit night. Fredrick always said that humanity is doomed to wander blindly in an endless night, and that truth is the only light to help us find our place in the world. His lamp was small however, and he felt lost. Maria beside him must've felt the same, her gaze was restless, jumpy even for the faintest of sounds.
"Should we head back?" he suggested.
Maria turned her look sharply, considering the offer. She looked like she wanted nothing more, but eventually she shrugged and refused. "I don't want to return to Fredrick empty handed."
Gael agreed, to his dismay. Whatever empty handed means. They moved on.
A hour came, a hour went, and Gael found it increasingly difficult to stay awake. He began to snooze mid walking, and tripped over every rock and large branch he chanced to encounter, once he even bumped his head into a tree and Maria laughed her lungs out. As it turned out, there was a corpse hanging from that very tree. "I'll leave the honor to you," Maria said and sat at the foot of the tree.
He yawned and reluctantly went on with his task. "This one's hanging pretty high," he observed. Maria buzzed a jolly tune, her raven locks fell as a black cascade on her fair face and shoulders, Gael wanted nothing more than lie by her side.
He cut the rope, leaned over the body and held his lamp close to its face. "Ah, this one's fresh."
"Lucky you."
His lamp did little good when he tried to examine the corpse. "Maria, your lamp." He stretched his hand towards her and took it. "Now that's better."
He covered his nose and watched closely. The man's face was black and reddish, and his body began to bloat, the lower part especially, if they arrived just a few days later the weight would've pulled his body from its neck. His skin turned greenish at some places, and maggots have settled in his belly. Gael found no evidence of violence, as expected.
Something was missing though. He looked around for a bit, and found a very large log lying just beside them. After some trial and error he managed to climb atop it and concluded that he may not have been high enough to reach the rope and hang himself, but this man certainly was.
"Surprise surprise, another suicide."
"Fourty seven suicides to zero murders it is," she mumbled.
None of them expected anything else. After the disappearance of Yuria, choosing the Weeping Woods as a final resting place became a fashion for the suicidals. Simple Folk love nothing so much as they love a good story, Gael thought once, the queen is dead, and the forest is weeping, a simple story for simple folk. The corpses swinging in the wind, just another part to the story, and Gael was convinced that was exactly what they wished for.
Hours came and went, corpses were examined and ignored. They kept on walking in silence, as each of them sunk into his own tiredness. Despite himself Gael wished that the trees would just start to tear around him.
Dawn creeped at slow pace and the world was alive again, awaken under the golden paleness of the morning sun. Mist settled between the grey and partly naked sentinels of the forest, much like the day before. Then terribly sudden, something gripped his attention. Gael stopped dead in his tracks, not sure if he imagined what he saw.
"What's the matter?" Maria asked.
He didn't answer, instead he took a few steps back and looked on the ground and the light brown-orange blanket that covered it. Almost completely hidden, there was a glimpse of a bright blue color from under the leaves. He picked up the flower and gave it to Maria.
"The Flower of Yuria." She sniffed it, and smiled.

*****

Later that morning they decided to have a short rest afoot one of the trees. They dined over what little food they had left, and Maria managed to pick a few mushroomed she claimed were safe to eat. A few words were said about how they shouldn't tarry too long. Maria fell asleep shortly after, hiding her face under her black leather coat from the wind. Gael thought he should wake her up, but instead he himself dug as much as he could into his own coat and slept.
When she woke him up it was well after sunset. "Gael, Gael!" She shook him violently. He opened his eyes. "Listen..."
At first he heard nothing, just the regular wispy sounds of the forest. Then he heard something, a sobbing, weak and distant, like an echo from far away, a whimpering of an old man. The queen is dead, and the forest his weeping. "Sobbing," he said, puzzled.
"Weeping," she corrected him. "Let's go."
They were in luck. A full moon hanged high in the sky, and the naked forest was washed with pale silvery light. The sight of corpses dwindled quickly until there were no more bodies to be found, and the deeper they delve into the forest the richer the sobbing has become.
What started as a hushed sobbing became a chaotic melody of sounds, added layer after layer. Moans were coming from everywhere. Short and sharp screams startled them from out of nowhere, wailing, crying, at times he even thought he heard mumbling. Every sound was distinct in its texture, and they couldn't all possibly belong to a single being. Every sound came from nowhere and from everywhere all at once. That night, Gael realized he may be going insane.
It grew louder and louder as time passed, what sounded like an echo then was now monstrous waves crashing onto a coast, and the once faint screams of agony made them duck now like the sudden crackling of thunder.
He could feel his heart beating at his chest violently, and Maria's eyes were thick with fear. Did you know, Fredrick? he wondered. Why didn't you warn us?
The storm of sounds became insufferable, and the further they got, the more it seemed to resist them. Maria groaned, "my head..."
"Mine too." He could feel his pulse in his head so strongly it was as if someone hit him at the rhythm with a blacksmith's hammer. What are we supposed to find, Fredrick?
The Flowers of Yuria became a more frequent sight until they seemed to pop up everywhere. They grew on moss covered rocks, besides tall mushrooms with red topping, on thick and rotten tree branch, even on tree themselves. Gael was no botanist, but something at the back of his head told him that flowers do not behave like that.
He was busy trying to ignore the weeping, and wondering on the strange flower, that he did not even realize they were entering a clearing. When he noticed though, he became breathless.
He pulled Maria by her coat, realizing she probably had been staring at the ground for a long while. She lifted her eyes, and her pupils grew so wide there was almost no color left in her eyes.
They stood at the rims of a large clearing, the ground around them mostly barren.
In the middle of the clearing there was a thick, wild growth of Yuria's flower, forming a giant bush glowing in the moonlight like sapphires, reaching almost as high as a man's chest.
And within that bush, stood a figure, manlike, and his hand was reaching upwards.
Deathly silent, they took careful, measured steps, and looked closer.
The figure stood still like a statue, yet it was somehow clear that it was a living being. Manlike, though its skin was ghastly pale, milky, cracked and folded like some ancient tree with only a hint of clothing clinging to its dried and bony body. It looked up into the skies, mouth open, eyes filled with sheer terror, as if begging for the moon in mute appeal. Gael noticed that the strange flower even grew on its lower belly.
"What is that thing?"
Maria didn't answer.
They circled the being, studying it. Fredrick always taught them to search for the truth, but what was that truth, here? The queen is dead, and the forest is weeping, a lie.
He tried to peek closer, stepping a bit on the bush to examine the figure from up close. He looked to its face, a human face, frozen in agony.
Its left eye suddenly moved, spotting him.
A violent shiver went through his spine, and the world became dark. So dark.
He fell.