![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Twisted
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Pairing/Character: Richard, gen. Bit dark.
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Not mine - Disney own this version, which is in turn based on Terry Goodkind's stuff.
Author's Notes: Written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legendland/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
legendland's Picture Prompt Challenge. I chose this picture.
Summary: Richard is a woodsman through and through.
Richard is not given to flights of fancy. He had a life before Kahlan and before Zedd, back before he even knew of the evil that existed beyond the magic barrier that cleaved the Westlands from the Midlands, and it was not always an easy one.
Richard is a woodsman, through and through. He knows the woods, understands their moods better than even Zedd can grasp, with all of his long years and his magic. He has listened to the creak of trees groaning under the weight of their own branches, caught the sound of slow ticking underneath the bark that tells him that they will lose this battle and break, bitter and rotten to the core. He has listened to the wind as it rustles through the leaves, and that sound is not always kind.
The trees are softer in the summer, when the sun is warm and rain is plenty, but there is a hunger in the winter's bitter breeze and Richard knows it well.
He has known his own hunger, too, feeling it gnaw in the pit of his belly when the paths stretch out before him, far longer journeying home than they were when he first ventured out. He has known the pain of aching muscles pushed beyond endurance as the miles and miles of forest catch at his legs, slowing his steps, and he has known the loneliness that being the only living and moving thing in hearing distance can bring.
He has known fear.
The woods are dark at night, darker than any who have not been at the centre of them can ever hope to understand. Even now, in the Midlands, where the land stretches further than he could ever have imagined, the woods do not often grow as thick as the ones Richard spent his childhood in.
There have been nights where he could not see the stars, nights where not even the close clustered trees could shield him entirely from the wind's bitter edge. Nights when there is no breath to stir the leaves, when everything hung still and eerie. Nights when the wolves howled in the distance, but were still somehow less terrifying than the weight of the trees around him, how they seemed to lean in towards the small fire he'd coaxed to life, the dry rustling of their leaves, the low groaning of their bark holding a cold and angry note that Richard is still not sure he imagined.
But the forest is made of living things, things that cannot be understood by man. Things that were there before man walked upon the earth and that will still be there long after he is gone. They are old beyond measure, and grow strange and twisted sometimes, but Richard understands them.
He does not understand the thing that grows on the hill.
The Creator did not have a hand in this, this twisted outcropping of black stone that crawls up towards the overcast sky. It is not always winter here, but it is always dim - the building draws the light from the sky until all around it is steel grey, eerie and empty of birds. Empty of everything that Richard finds familiar, Whoever built this place has long since abandoned it, or been consumed by it, and its windows stretch up towards the sky, vacant and empty.
But Richard can feel the weight of it, heavier than the weight of trees, eyeless and yet still watching.
Still waiting.
Richard shivers. This is all manmade, this thing of dark stone stained still darker with the blood of ages. He has read the stories that history wrought, of the armies that laid siege to it over the years, of the battle that flowed back and forth, hundreds dying for each bare brick. How at the end, there was never a victor, just death and destruction all around. But not of the building - never that. Whether won or lost, the castle stood on, untouched and undamaged, as fickle as any forest and far more unpredictable.
There is evil soaked into the very foundations of this place, dark magic wreathing every window and every wall. Even from this distance, Richard can feel it, the way it calls to the darkness inside him and glories in it.
"Are you ready?" Zedd asks. His voice is subdued and his face troubled. When they first started on this quest - before they reached this place, the end of the journey - Zedd had mocked the stories that were told about it, dismissing them as tales to scare children and telling them that buildings could not be evil, that they were simply places where evil deeds were done.
He no longer looks convinced by his own reasoning, and his fingers twitch beneath the cuffs of his robes, faint traces of smoke puffing up with each involuntary jerk.
It doesn't matter. Evil or not, Richard knows what he must do.
He draws the Sword of Truth from its scabbard, and the blade sings faintly in the cool, grey light. It is a challenge, a defiance aimed at things that should stay in the dark, in the Underworld where they belong.
The challenge does not go unmet. The air gathers in front of him, an unfamiliar weight to it as he steps forward, and somewhere inside his head he hears a faint snarl of warning.
Richard was a woodsman once, and the forest is deep in his bones. He is not given to flights of fancy, nor is he prone to bending at the slightest breeze. Manmade or not, this is just another forest, grown twisted and needing and axe - or a sword - to thin out the undergrowth, let light through the canopy so that things can bloom and grow again.
In the end, woodsman or Seeker, Richard has tamed wilder than this.
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Pairing/Character: Richard, gen. Bit dark.
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Not mine - Disney own this version, which is in turn based on Terry Goodkind's stuff.
Author's Notes: Written for
legendland/legendland's Picture Prompt Challenge. I chose this picture.
Summary: Richard is a woodsman through and through.
Richard is not given to flights of fancy. He had a life before Kahlan and before Zedd, back before he even knew of the evil that existed beyond the magic barrier that cleaved the Westlands from the Midlands, and it was not always an easy one.
Richard is a woodsman, through and through. He knows the woods, understands their moods better than even Zedd can grasp, with all of his long years and his magic. He has listened to the creak of trees groaning under the weight of their own branches, caught the sound of slow ticking underneath the bark that tells him that they will lose this battle and break, bitter and rotten to the core. He has listened to the wind as it rustles through the leaves, and that sound is not always kind.
The trees are softer in the summer, when the sun is warm and rain is plenty, but there is a hunger in the winter's bitter breeze and Richard knows it well.
He has known his own hunger, too, feeling it gnaw in the pit of his belly when the paths stretch out before him, far longer journeying home than they were when he first ventured out. He has known the pain of aching muscles pushed beyond endurance as the miles and miles of forest catch at his legs, slowing his steps, and he has known the loneliness that being the only living and moving thing in hearing distance can bring.
He has known fear.
The woods are dark at night, darker than any who have not been at the centre of them can ever hope to understand. Even now, in the Midlands, where the land stretches further than he could ever have imagined, the woods do not often grow as thick as the ones Richard spent his childhood in.
There have been nights where he could not see the stars, nights where not even the close clustered trees could shield him entirely from the wind's bitter edge. Nights when there is no breath to stir the leaves, when everything hung still and eerie. Nights when the wolves howled in the distance, but were still somehow less terrifying than the weight of the trees around him, how they seemed to lean in towards the small fire he'd coaxed to life, the dry rustling of their leaves, the low groaning of their bark holding a cold and angry note that Richard is still not sure he imagined.
But the forest is made of living things, things that cannot be understood by man. Things that were there before man walked upon the earth and that will still be there long after he is gone. They are old beyond measure, and grow strange and twisted sometimes, but Richard understands them.
He does not understand the thing that grows on the hill.
The Creator did not have a hand in this, this twisted outcropping of black stone that crawls up towards the overcast sky. It is not always winter here, but it is always dim - the building draws the light from the sky until all around it is steel grey, eerie and empty of birds. Empty of everything that Richard finds familiar, Whoever built this place has long since abandoned it, or been consumed by it, and its windows stretch up towards the sky, vacant and empty.
But Richard can feel the weight of it, heavier than the weight of trees, eyeless and yet still watching.
Still waiting.
Richard shivers. This is all manmade, this thing of dark stone stained still darker with the blood of ages. He has read the stories that history wrought, of the armies that laid siege to it over the years, of the battle that flowed back and forth, hundreds dying for each bare brick. How at the end, there was never a victor, just death and destruction all around. But not of the building - never that. Whether won or lost, the castle stood on, untouched and undamaged, as fickle as any forest and far more unpredictable.
There is evil soaked into the very foundations of this place, dark magic wreathing every window and every wall. Even from this distance, Richard can feel it, the way it calls to the darkness inside him and glories in it.
"Are you ready?" Zedd asks. His voice is subdued and his face troubled. When they first started on this quest - before they reached this place, the end of the journey - Zedd had mocked the stories that were told about it, dismissing them as tales to scare children and telling them that buildings could not be evil, that they were simply places where evil deeds were done.
He no longer looks convinced by his own reasoning, and his fingers twitch beneath the cuffs of his robes, faint traces of smoke puffing up with each involuntary jerk.
It doesn't matter. Evil or not, Richard knows what he must do.
He draws the Sword of Truth from its scabbard, and the blade sings faintly in the cool, grey light. It is a challenge, a defiance aimed at things that should stay in the dark, in the Underworld where they belong.
The challenge does not go unmet. The air gathers in front of him, an unfamiliar weight to it as he steps forward, and somewhere inside his head he hears a faint snarl of warning.
Richard was a woodsman once, and the forest is deep in his bones. He is not given to flights of fancy, nor is he prone to bending at the slightest breeze. Manmade or not, this is just another forest, grown twisted and needing and axe - or a sword - to thin out the undergrowth, let light through the canopy so that things can bloom and grow again.
In the end, woodsman or Seeker, Richard has tamed wilder than this.