Fight for your anchor. It was a simple phrase that had been said in the heat of the moment some few hundred years before his time, or so the tale went. He had lived by those words for a long time, but just like all things, it had been lost to the shores of time like footprints in sand. With the blistering winds ringing obnoxiously in the man's ears, he came back to his senses and focused on his current predicament. At that moment, the knight was falling head first into the scarlet foliage at a speed that would surely wound him severely when he crashed into the forest floor.
With a simple raising of his left leg, he grazed the wall he was falling next to which led to his body flipping from the force of the connection while the speed he was falling at decreased massively for a few short moments. However, he regained it not long after that, though that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things as he had already fallen through the tree tops where he was immediately assaulted by branches the color of night itself and leaves a brighter red than even his armor back when he had first received it. With the various sounds of rustling leaves and snapping branches filling the vicinity, he tried and failed to get a grip on anything around him, but after falling on a few smaller branches, he landed on a much thicker branch with a loud thump that knocked the wind out of the knight. He fought to keep the black spots from completely taking over his vision, as he laid stomach down on the sturdy midnight-colored branch. His attention was pulled from that when the sound of wood tearing apart blared like a siren from the nearby trunk of the tree which was quickly followed up by the branch's descent to the surface.
Moments later, a low boom could be heard while the remaining splinters of the branch flew in all directions, while the knight–in the center of a man-sided crater–laid, unmoving. A groan of both pain and annoyance was the only indicator that the knight was not in the world of dreams at that moment.
'God, why does it always have to be falling?' Not receiving an answer, he sighed and turned himself over with a good amount of effort. The first thing he saw when his eyes adjusted to the great amount of red was his blade hanging from a branch near the hole he had made in the roof of the red forest. There were several things he saw around him that were of immediate importance, such as the small, almost unnoticeable clicking and ticking sounds he heard not too far away from his current position. After hearing the sound, a brush of energy exploded from his core, allowing him to get back to his feet, while his hand grazed over his dented chestplate allowing it to restore itself. Then he noticed something else peculiar: the red that seemed to encompass the entire forest seemed to be… melting? That was the only way he could describe the sight of beads of the red substance dribbling down the trunks of the trees that had fallen through; the patter of the red rain against his armor was mildly annoying for the few moments it fell from the disrupted branches and was elated when the precipitation ended not even a minute after it had started.
Sighing in contentment, he emerged from the hole and looked around the clearing with not a great amount of wonder and a great amount of suspicion. The red grass that came up to his calves were leaving stains of the red coloring across his armor clad legs, almost like it was repainting the worn out gear. He did take notice however that beneath the coat of red, a vivid viridian was revealed. 'So it's a regular forest, but with red paint plastered over it…?' Upon that observation, he was slightly bewildered to see the plant secrete a red liquid that soon enshrouded the grass in red once again. It was almost entrancing to look at, yet did manage to rip his attention away from the odd sight to investigate the deeper foliage because deep in the hazy blend of crimson herbage and jet black trunks, something was rustling.
The thin ticks and clacks that were barely a wisp of a sound were exponentially louder in the dead silent clearing. Glancing back where his sword was in the trees then glancing back to where the uneasy sounds were coming from and as he was about to blur into nothing more than an after image, the first step he took he froze. His heavy foot landed on the cold, bloody grass, painting his foot in a fresh coat of red, but that's not what froze the knight in his spot, no, it was a low, reverberating groan of pain that seemed to come from the nearest tree. Though it spooked him–though he'd never admit it–he continued forward to that tree while suppressing the shudders of discomfort that ran down his spine from the agonizing groans of the grounds he tread on. Luckily, the discomforting sounds did not drown out the alarming taps of the nearby wildlife that could very well be a predator which–if his ears weren't deceiving him–then the tapping was getting closer both vertically and horizontally. Thankfully however, the creature was either unaware that he had heard him and was still trying to stalk him, or it was simply a slow creature and could not move fast at all; both were favorable, but the former was even more so compared to the latter. The knight paused for a moment in his weary stride through the crimson jungle to turn and scan his surroundings once again, expecting to see something that was hideous, large, and imposing, yet he didn't see a single thing in the jungle. He was about to turn around when he saw and heard a rustle in the leaves high up behind him, then he felt it–or rather, he heard it.
Drip
Drip
Drip
The cold sound of liquid hitting metal echoed off the trees around him made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Something was above him, and from the heavy breathing, it was big, really big, while the rustling in the distance continued to get louder as it got closer and closer. Glancing upward, the dread of getting caught only heighted when he took in the appearance of the creature above him. Its red plates did not glisten in the small amounts of light peaking through the thick treetop, yet it managed to somehow absorb the color of what was around it, seeming to match the thick, strong black branch that it was looking at him from. Its many, tiny legs clung to the branch with such a ferocious grip that it left holes in the wood, latching itself to the tree. If he paid closer attention to the tree itself, he would've noticed the tree bleeding profusely from every wound that was given to it from the armored centipede. His eyes trailed along the long body of the creature that wrapped around the entire branch until he arrived at the long, serrated, and deadly club at the end of its body. Though it was closer to a sword in appearance, there was no doubt in the knight's mind that that creature was able to crush almost anything with that thing. Trailing back over the armor, he arrived at the front of the creature, a vicious set of fangs were present in the open, frothing maw. Not a single eye was seen on the creature's skull, however.
Taking a step back, his eyes never left the creature, until he heard something snap behind him. Whirling around, he quickly met an exact copy of the creature which he had just been staring at, but on the other side of him. He was surrounded, and he didn't have a weapon. The one which was now in front of him decided to make the first move and before the knight was able to react, somehow managed to swing its lower half without having to move its upper half, despite the club not being a tail-like appendage. The club landed its mark, right into the knight's left side, sending him flying from the force applied to him from the simple swing. He landed unceremoniously into the trunk of one of the bigger trees in the area, which exploded outward from his impact. Blood, intestines, and brain matter all splashed outward from the catastrophic impact, yet none of it was his. His armor–which he believed had been blessed by death– was stronger than ever before, and such a simple swing wouldn't do all that much damage to him, but that didn't stop this disorientation from setting in. Groaning, he emerged from the crafted tree, his back caked in a new coat of red as got up to his feet while deciding to ignore the screaming tree behind him and the oddity that the trees actually are for a moment and focus entirely on the fight ahead of him. Both of them were now in front of him, staring him down with a starved hunger emanating around them like a tangible aura of darkness. Balling his fists, the knight's calm face behind the helmet morphed into something far removed from calm, yet even farther removed from rage. The plain expression behind the visor grew distant and emotionless as he readied himself. Darkness may have driven the pair of hungry man-eating centipedes, but the darkness that pushed him was greater than theirs. They stood in that stand still for only a few moments before both of them split off from each other, the first charged to the left of him, while the other charged to the right. They were far more intelligent than he anticipated.
Taking a step back, he narrowly avoided the swing from the monster on the left, and watched as the club almost collided with the other one's club creating vast gusts of wind from the combined effort of both of the enemies which pushed him back a few steps. Winding up, the knight leaned back slightly, he turned his attention to the one on the right–who was closer– and with every bit of force he could muster, he launched his fist forward. Instantly, boom after boom was heard as in not even a moment, the knight's fist connected with the centipede's open mouth and was instantly eviscerated. The face caved and disfigured, the insides liquified, and the shell cracked and shattered into dust, after the single punch, nearly nothing remained. The knight gaped lightly at the audacious strength that he seemed to possess now. At one point in time, he was barely able to match The Tyrant–his mother– in pure strength, yet now he eclipsed her in raw strength; it was a rather bittersweet realization. Zoning back into reality, his eyes darted to the left and quickly fell back into his stance, but he deflated when the creature froze and scurried in what he could only assume was faster than a flash; perhaps he was exaggerating a little bit.
Sighing, the knight looked at the carriage of the extremely short skirmish with a grimace. There was already a lot of red in his vision from the forest itself, but now the only contrast to the red–the wood of the trees–was now painted an ugly blue from the splattered remains of the enemy, yet something else was gnawing at his mind. In the heat of the moment, he seemed to have forgotten what he was so concerned about and instead of worrying about it anymore, he declared mentally to focus on making sure no more of those starved, disgusting centipedes were anywhere in the premises. He heard nothing, he saw nothing, but that feeling of dread returned as he took his first step to escape the area only to hear the low moan of the forest itself; it gave him pause–if only for a few short moments before he finally remembered what had alarmed him to such a degree. Robotically, he turned around, and stared at the tree he had found himself in a few minutes prior to where he was. It was sickening.
The forest was deathly quiet while a chilly breeze enveloped the small section of the forest, for In the center of the black tree's trunk was a man sized hole, but that's what he expected, no, what made his skin crawl was the blood oozing from the tree. Ropes of the tree's pink intestines lay on the ground around it in tatters. Strange chunks of what he could only assume was brain matter covered the large wound odiously, while in the center of the crater, a single eye hung limply from the tree, only odiously to it from the optic nerve, its blue iris dim with lack of life. This wasn't a tree–well at least it wasn't always a tree. This was once a human.