He had never been afraid of anything in his life.
So, why this? Why now?
His youth of training as a warrior prepared him well. That—and his size and strength—helped him with the handful of dungeons he worked so hard to clear. None of that frightened him.
So, why now, alone on this moor, was he scared?
A sound in the distance ignited his warrior training. Wheeling around with his arms outstretched, he hefted his Warhammer of Power in his right hand and clutched his empty bag in his left.
Even his normal strength, which was twice that of a farmer, would not typically permit this feat, but attuned as he was to his heavy gloves and platinum ring of power, it came without effort.
He shook off the fear and uncertainty. There was nothing there, but the sound brought him out of his mania and into the present.
His surroundings were unfamiliar. A grey sky stretched as far as he could see, yet there were no clouds. The presence of the sun was felt but not seen. Hints of pink and purple thistle dotted the barren moor of yellows and pale greens that stretched before him.
A half day’s walk in the distance, peaks of an unfamiliar mountain range jutted into the sky. Most curiously, he was drawn to what appeared to be a lone stone in the distance. It was a large stone, sitting about a half an hour’s trudge, but that wasn’t what he needed to be doing.
He had at least four other jobs waiting for him.
Time and time again, he had ruined himself this way: chasing wonder, chasing his curiosity and hopping from one adventure to the next. He could rarely complete a quest these days—he’d say he was bored or that his quests were no longer challenging, or that he didn’t like a particular town or patron.
They were all excuses.
In his youth, he could do anything. Any weapon he picked up would flow in his grip. At first, he fought with a sword, largely because everyone was training in sword fighting, and it was the easiest way to earn bags of coin back in those days. It helped, too, that he was great with a sword, but it was boring. Mind numbingly boring.
That was when he’d had the brilliant idea to switch to the Warhammer, a choice that changed the trajectory of his whole life. It was a much more creative weapon and very respected one, too.
He found that any time someone learns that you fight with a Warhammer, they’re either in awe, or quickly dead. It depends on how you let them know.
But now he was remembering where he had been before he was here. He fell down the spiral of self-doubt and indecision, then slipped into his mania . . . at which point, he must have stepped out for a walk.
How he got from there to here, he couldn’t recall.
The filis and bards, those who travelled far, had said that the land has a way of guiding you when you are not thinking. A valley here, a river there, a sound to avoid and a sound to investigate—all these small things led us where the land wanted.
Something wanted him here. With childlike wonder, he propelled toward the stone in the distance, and his cycle repeated.
His path to the stone would have been short if he had gone straight, but it was blocked by a moor, making direct travel impossible. As he struggled against the thistle and peat keeping him from his goal, the path felt like everything else—unnecessarily difficult.
How many lords and ladies were recognized purely for being born to the right parents? How many of them experienced a lavish life only due to their birthright?
Birthright. What a strange word. Was wealth a person’s right at birth? What did we have a right to at our birth? He was stronger, faster and more cunning than nearly all from his homeland, but his birthright . . . was poverty.
If the world was built on merit and ability, he would be recognized above nearly all. But although he has amazed and received accolades from his few patrons, his homeland favoured a surname over skills and coin over kills.
He caught himself—he’d fallen down the rabbit hole again. Been trapped by the spiral of destructive thoughts that consumed his attention and made him forget himself.
Yet maybe it was better to remain in his thoughts instead of in the moor.
He looked back from where he’d come. Might it be better to go back there or go West . . . wherever West was.
He had a job that would lead him West.
He halted, catching himself upright and placed a hand to his hammer once more. He found himself standing on a bit of solid ground in front of a toppled stone monolith. It was clear it had once been standing proud, but now it was laying in submission to the elements.
Scanning his surroundings, he saw that he was alone with the stone on this barren moor. Staring at the stone in awe—in bewilderment, even—he could feel its presence in the back of his neck. Its grandeur was magnificent and frightening.
His mind returned to the spiral; to the many quests he’d undertaken which had been interesting at their start, but quickly became little more than a chore. These ones were no better, so which to complete first?
He did not know.
He had a hundred questions but no answers. As he returned to these thoughts, he filled with rage, but this rage was not his own. It burned like fire, but felt alien. He reached in his bag for an implement to quell this fire. In his red hot fury, he struck at the stone and a fissure formed across the midsection. The sound from his blow unnaturally echoed across the moor like thunder from the gods.
He quickly rose to the sound and scanned the horizon. The ricochets from the mountains far to the North were unnaturally loud, given the distance to their base. To the south, there were no mountains to bounce an echo, but a sound still returned to him.
His warrior instincts brought him back to the moment, and he found himself still hitting the stone. How many strikes he had taken he couldn’t remember. It was almost as if the stone sang to his fury.
With the spike of his Warhammer, he struck at the stone over and over, no aim or plan—just chasing the impact. Impact. Impact. With each blow, the shape of a hollow became clearer.
At the same intensity with which the assault started, he stopped, and within the plateau of the stone at the southern edge he saw what he had done. A hole, like an egg but bigger, met his gaze. It was like a place to lay his head, so lay he did.
At first, in penitence to the weight of his shadows, he laid face down, nose smashed into the stone. A sense of comfort washed over him and a sense of calm finally flowed through his body. It streamed through every inch, chasing his blood to the ends of his fingertips to the ends of his toes and washing away the rage from before.
He filled his lungs as he breathed in, then expelled his insanity as he exhaled.
He relished in the peace.
He remained there, penitent to the stone for three days, in a dreamlike state, a stranger to the world of distraction and distrust.
On the fourth day, a noise startled him awake. Having remained in this place, nearly motionless for three days—only relieving himself where he kneeled and taking water from the dew that settled in his hollow—he had become accustomed to the sounds of the place. Accustomed to the absence of nearly all other noise, save for the wind from the skies and from his lungs.
But this . . . this was a new sound.
He peeled his eyes from the depths of the hollow and positioned them just enough to see the stone to his left.
He blinked at the appearance of a common bee.
Annoyed by its presence, he peeled his weapon hand away from the stone and smashed it. By instinct he recoiled his left hand, feeling as if he was stung.
Examining his palm, he found it clear, but the back of his hand was screaming with pain. A noise in the distance took his attention and the years of warrior training showed their force over his behaviour. He shifted to one knee and laid a hand on his hammer again, then quickly scanned the horizon. He turned to the mountains behind, but saw nothing that could have produced the sound.
It’s nothing, he assured himself.
His focus returned to the bee. Where did it come from? Was there a hive nearby? Might it have honey? For the first time in many days, he was reminded of his stomach.
Hunger gnawing, he sat down and placed his back to the hollow. The thought of leaving the stone terrified him, so he stuffed his loot bag behind him and laid back to rest his head in the hollow with his eyes to the sky. Despite the rough nature with which the hole had been carved, his head fit comfortably in the space.
Unlike the nature of the place, he felt warmth. There were still no clouds in the sky, just grey—grey mountains beyond, grey stone to his back and a grey sky above.
Just as a slice of peace opened up, pain like a knife sunk into his back. He burst upright, turning to seek the culprit, but no matter how much he looked, he saw nothing.
Yet, the pain continued—this time, he was met with a stab in his upper chest. Somehow, it was breaking through his armour.
He retreated into the moor, hammer in hand, trying to understand. Another sting at his back and then again at his front sent him reeling away from the stone.
His anger was rising now, boiling up and pressured by the bewilderment. As a sting sunk deep into his thigh, he pulled up sharp from the pain. He immediately checked on the stone—not sure why—but was relieved to find it was still there.
He would find this enemy. He crouched, then spun as his warrior’s rage burst from within. Power ran through him like the fire that exploded from the distant mountains.
One swing after another found no purchase, and with each marching step new barbs found their way through his Armor of Power. By now, his eyes were half-closed, his ears were burning red, and his grip on consciousness was beginning to wane.
He lunged with a spinning swing so fierce, his hammer slipped from his grip and he crashed into the peat. At first, he thought he’d hit his head on a stone, for the hum in his ears was numbing, but as he raised his chin and opened his eyes, he managed to behold the source of the sound.
He propped himself up on all fours at the base of a thistle bush. In the half minute he lingered there, he realized the source of his attackers. At the cup of each thistle—where one would usually find the flower or weed—there was a pearl.
Just as a city fountain could sometimes clog and force the flow of water to a trickle, the pearls fought to spill out. Tumbling out of the cup, they fell to the ground, but before they touched down, they burst into yellow orbs and took flight.
He focused on the few in front of him, but as he looked around, he found that the moor was carbonated with thistle bees. Confusion flashed and fear followed. He grabbed his Warhammer and ran, but the swarm had taken chase. The few harried swings he managed to let loose only slowed him down.
The bees didn’t just sting and take off. They seemed to inject their poison as they dogged his steps.
With his fear turning to desperation, he marked the hollow in stone and barrelled on. Instinct told him he had reached the stone—whether for refuge or otherwise, he couldn’t fathom. But he needed to get back there.
Racing back, his fear began to abate further as more bees blanketed his skin. He slowed his pace as he neared the stone; his limbs were beginning to shut down. He realized he was screaming, but the sound was muffled by bees pressing in and out of his mouth. His tongue, heavy with stingers, chewed like the flesh of a dried fruit.
Writhing in pain and covered from head to toe in the heat and hum of a thousand bees, he knew his death was at hand. He saw the whole of his life in a single moment. A thousand moments passed in his mind’s eye, all of which currently meant something or meant something to him at one point in time.
Behind the stories, his agony faded . . . or did it press? He couldn’t tell. Time seemed to stop as one image of his life flowed to the next—sometimes as moving memories, sometimes as stills. In a dark place in his mind, he could sense that the images were drawing closer to the present.
At last, his mind stopped at this moment; at the image of him, there in front of the stone. The scene centred on the stone, bated breath, a cold sweat adds to the sensations of his skin, a sense that the gods themselves have kissed him all over and the devils below are flaying him alive. In unison, the bees disengage, stingers in skin, hovering inches away as if they were apiary armour.
With a thousand stingers deep in his body, the hollow in stone solely at his mind’s eye, and the bees hum to cloak his thoughts, he stopped. He was wrapped in a pain so intense and a pleasure so great that he felt them as one complete sensation.
He has never been more complete in his life. There was nothing else to add.
In this moment, at the edge of his death, man, hive, and hollow became one. With two steps left in his life, he knelt at the stone. Suddenly, as if grabbed by the creator himself, an image so overwhelming, so terrifying, flooded his mind: a great forest spreading across the land, harbouring power beyond any ring or amulet—power beyond any sword or hammer—with the strength of a thousand oaks, a thousand yew, incorruptible men.
At last, his quest was clear, and with this peace, he cradled his head in the hollow and died, then and there.
This story has never been told, for I call myself the LootLark—and this is my origin.
I happened upon the prone monolith with its curious hollow not more than a year past these events. The hollow in stone, at that time, lay accompanied by a pair of trees. Two bags lay at the base of one, and a third bag lay in the shadow of the stone. I didn’t dare touch their contents.
My quest for these two years has been to write the stories untold and unsung. These are the stories whispered between friends, the stories a mother employs to calm, warn or motivate her child. I have dedicated myself to this charge.
When I arrived at the hollow, I was weary with travel. Seeking a moment of rest, I sat before the stone, facing the curious trees. With a sense of safety in the air, I lay my head in the hollow. It was surprisingly warm. And there, with my eyes to the sky, calmed by the scent of the moor, a stream of images began to permeate my mind.
I recount those images here, for the story gifted to me is the story of hive, hollow, and man and their everlasting quest.
When the last image faded from my mind, I awoke, having fallen asleep. In an instant, my senses snapped awake as a host of bees hovered before me. They floated in the shape of a man, expressed in astonishing detail, from the glitter of his neck adornments to the subtle flow of his robe.
Before this day, I would not have thought such a thing possible, because as I laid there, frozen by such an astonishing site, the host raised what appeared to be an arm and pointed me in the direction of town. I understood that the host wanted the story he gifted me to be written.
Unfortunately, for years I feared revealing this tale, for twice since I have returned to the hollow in stone, and twice left with a story to tell. Each time, the stand of trees has grown, and each time I’ve left more afraid than the last.
To this end, I penned “Aye, be the Grove of Hive and Hollow” as a warning turned rhyme for Mother and Brother alike.