Runtar’s Diary: The Clearing Without Faces

We came across a clearing filled with statues.
Not arranged, not honoured, just left where they had fallen. Some stood upright, others half-collapsed into the ground, but what struck me first was that many of them had no faces.

Not worn away.

Removed.

There was a gnome there, working on one of them when we arrived.
He was cheerful. That’s what made it worse. He hadn’t even noticed us at first, too busy chiselling the face from a boy who had already been turned to stone. He spoke to us like we were customers, or volunteers.

“More faces,” he said.

I tried to talk to him. I didn’t want to rush into another fight, not after everything else. I asked him what he was doing, where the statues had come from, if any of it could be undone.He didn’t seem to understand why I was asking.

To him, it was just what he did.

Collecting faces.

He told us he wasn’t the one turning them to stone. He pointed to a tree in the clearing, something that looked ordinary until you knew to look at it properly.

That’s when it started.

The tree wasn’t just a tree. It reached for us, vines wrapping tight, pulling us in. I felt it take hold of me, and there was something in it, something beyond the strength of it, like it was trying to change me as much as restrain me.

I could feel what would happen if I stayed there.

That was enough.

I burned it.

I didn’t think, not properly. I just reacted. I looked straight at it and let everything go at once. The fire took it completely, exploded through it, and for a moment the whole clearing was nothing but flame and splintering wood.

The grip on me vanished as it died.

Afterwards, when we looked closer, it didn’t feel like we had killed something clean. There was flesh inside it, buried deep where there shouldn’t have been any. And pieces of those faces, the ones the gnome had taken, were caught up in it too.

I don’t know what that thing really was.

The gnome didn’t stop.

Even with the tree gone, even with everything burning around him, he carried on. Laughing, moving, trying to do whatever it was he thought he was about to do next.

So we ended it.

Properly.

There wasn’t much left of him after.

We stood there for a while afterwards, looking at the statues. Some of them were missing faces. Some weren’t. One still had its face intact, like it had just been waiting its turn.

We talked about whether anything could be done for them.

No one had an answer.

I didn’t like the idea of leaving them there like that, but I didn’t like the idea of pretending they were just stone either.

We moved on.

I keep thinking about how normal the gnome seemed to himself. How certain. Like there was no question that what he was doing was right, or at least acceptable.

I don’t know if that’s something worse than malice.

We made camp not far from the clearing. I cast a tiny hut so we could rest properly, something solid between us and whatever else might be out there. It held firm, just as it should. I’m sure nothing can get through it.