Transgression of the poppy field,
An unseen divide.
A step into his forest, was taken,
The Baron's precious garden, his pride.

Hounds, carrion birds,
Three days since released.
Tamed to pursue his game,
Escape to the prey would not be a relief.

Gradient of the path,
Can only lead to the mire.
Mammoth or Moth regardless,
Eaten by the murky pyre.

Hand in hand,
They, the Baron's past time;
Ran three days from the manor
Blind, in stillborn moonlight.

Scraping, stumbling, falling.
Roots drink their blood.
Prey and prisoners of the night,
In the forest of the evergreen flood.

Groping through the dark,
Evidence of fear in torn faces.
Vines their shackles,
Their stench leaving traces.

The baying of the Shamans,
Ullulating in alien tongues,
Became songs singing
Of lives in the forest undone.

The Forest, never once
Did it disappoint its master.
Earthly bane, poison sap,
Nurtured by her, the mother gardener.

She emerged from the swamp,
Naked, a lipless face.
Devoid of two limbs
Bearing the Cyclop's curse with grace.

Hopping faster than sense permitted,
One legged she bustled.
Towards the six hundred sixty seventh and sixty eighth.
She, a mass of bone and muscle.

As her Master would have it,
All life must be extinguished.
The Child, with rope she suspended.
High at the treetops the form diminished.

Before the Man could look,
The Child's head was no more.
An inverted fountain of blood erupted,
And drizzled upon his nose.


Frenzied he ran, tears stillborn,
Drove himself straight into an iron stake.
Dead eyes looked even as the Baron's champion said;
"A Hunter always knows his Master's estate."