Chapter 15

          As Annabelle, Gwendolyn, and The Keeper prepared to go into conversation, across the forest there were others preparing for certain matters.  Deep into the blackened emerald heart of the forest roamed a colony of unusual human like creatures known as the Crognards.  These so called Crognards were controlled by their evil king, named Varkus.  Anything he says goes.  Yes, Varkus is the evil king of the forest, but his appearance is very pleasing to the eye.

            He stands a little over three inches tall, with a muscular and broad twenty-eight year old body frame.  Though he looks twenty-eight; just like Gwendolyn, he too is ageless.  A wide smirk is seen slurred across his grim jaw line.  He looked up from the ground with a mysterious glimmer deep within his gorgeous dark grey and silver eyes which were complimenting his devious smirk flawlessly.  He rested his back up against the inside of the Stenwitch Sycamore Tree’s blackened and decayed walls.  He placed his right arm on his stomach, wrapping his hand around his waist while using his left hand to wonderingly stroke the ghost of a beard upon his handsome face.  Varkus sighed deeply before then running his left hand through his midnight black hair which also had a violet tint to it making it shine softly in the moonlight seeping through the crevices in the tree bark.  His hair was shaved short the whole way around his head with perfectly trimmed sideburns lining seamlessly in front of his ears, framing his face beautifully.  His bangs however where roughly tousled from the back but were spiked to a peak in the front. 

            Varkus’s clothes consisted of several emblems.  His shirt was tank top styled, open chested shirt made up of black crow feathers and dead leaves which were also black, and all sewn together with black spider silk thread.  He wore pants made up of the molted skin of a black snake, however he went barefoot.  Last of all he wore a cape which was made up of crow feathers and the furry carcass of a dead rat. 

            For Varkus and his colony of Crognards destroying the Queen and Nocotee was and still is their number one priority, however they have failed every attack they have launched on the enchanted forest.  Little did they know victory would be the hardest to win not because of fighting, but because of something a million times stronger than fighting ever could be?

Illustrated by Kristen Strutt