Information

Gharu
Legacy Name: Gharu

The Custom Marsh Telenine
Owner: Izmyr

Age: 5 years, 9 months, 5 days

Born: July 28th, 2018

Adopted: 5 years, 9 months, 5 days ago

Adopted: July 28th, 2018

Statistics

• Level: 1
   
• Strength: 10
   
• Defense: 10
   
• Speed: 10
   
• Health: 10
   
• HP: 10/10
   
• Intelligence: 1
   
• Books Read: 0
• Food Eaten: 0
• Job: Store Clerk

I can’t remember the name I was born with. To the few that manage to catch a glimpse of me, I am Gharu. I am a monster, a creature of legend to fear and hate.

I was born many centuries ago, when kings reigned from high thrones and homes were made of stone. My father was a filthy street urchin, and my mother was a poor girl that should have never been left alone out at night. My birth lost her any value she might have had, and I was labeled a bastard.
As a baby, I was sold to be raised as a slave, and my entire youth was spent under the orders of others. The labor was hard, but the treatment and living conditions wore on body and soul. I knew no other way of life, and no family to return to, so I had no hope of change. My heart blackened with every beating, every night sleeping on rotted straw, every moldy scrap of food.
Just as I reached my fifteenth year, my master suddenly collapsed and all of his slaves fled before he could be found. Those that had families would return home, but the ones raised into servitude had to look to each other. We traveled as far from our master’s land as we could before settling near a forest’s edge, where we began constructing our very own homes and starting new lives.
For the first time, I began dreaming of having a wife and family and a real life. I had eyes for a young girl that had been sold just like me, and longed to make her mine. Unfortunately, the blackness in my heart was stronger than my desire for happiness. A lifetime of misery had made me paranoid and angry, and I lashed out at those around me. We had all lived with so much pain, but as they all paired off and began having children and moving on, I only became more hostile.
My anger had chased everyone away, except the girl I desperately wanted as mine. She often visited me at my small cottage by the woods, separate from the little village we’d begun, and made sure I had food and spoke with me. I saw such caring in her brown eyes, such warmth as she talked me down from my rages. I longed to ask for her hand, but didn’t know what to say and feared making a misstep, and my fear became part of the ever-present wrath.
The day everything changed came when I reached my twentieth year. She came to visit again, finding me walking among the trees behind my house. I could tell by the way she ran, her eyes bright, that she had something exciting she wanted to tell me. She had hardly caught her breath when she spoke the words that fell like the lashes of a whip:

I’m getting married

What happened next is a blur. My rage burned white-hot, and drowned out all logic. Her body broke under my bloody hands, and when I could see clearly again I could only stand there in shock.
The sound of footsteps turned me around, and a cloaked figure stood in the shadows of the trees. No words were spoken, but I suddenly felt the weight of their power bearing down on me, stealing my breath and marching over my skin like burning insects. I cried out, unable to form the words to beg for mercy, but I could feel in their terrible power that they did not care. My body twisted and burned for what felt like hours, writhing under the figure’s emotionless stare, next to the girl I had loved. I must have reached complete insanity and broke through, because by the time it was over I only barely noticed the pain anymore.
Finally, the grip of the stranger’s power released, and I could breathe again. The figure was gone. It felt as though the entire world shifted, because my body and mind had changed. I understood it as though the hooded figure had explained it out loud, even though they made no sound. All of my ugliness had been brought to the surface, and I’d been transformed into a monster. I would no longer be a slave to my rage, but no one would ever love me, and I would suffer this way for eternity.

I fled into the woods at the sound of the villagers calling the dead girl’s name. I knew they would find her and blame me. I believed I deserved whatever punishment they would’ve given me, but I was too afraid of being unable to die afterward.
I journeyed deep into the forest as the sun fell, avoiding the light of the torches the villagers carried as they searched for me. Eventually I found a damp cave and settled there, shivering even with my new furred body, unable to build a fire for fear of being discovered. I lived as a pitiful creature for years after that, scavenging and foraging until I learned to hunt, and sneaking into the slowly growing village to steal food and clothes. The only thing that would fit my body was a heavy cloak, however. I also began using a walking stick to help keep my hunched form upright.
One sunny day, I wandered close to the village to watch the people go about their lives. I envied them, now that I could see without the red veil of rage. Homes had been built in the space between my old cottage and the rest of the village, and families now laid their roots near the forest’s edge. Some men were working on a roof, while women hung clothes or tended gardens, and children fed animals or ran free.
One child caught and held my attention. She was sitting alone on the crumbled remains of a stone wall, a little doll clutched tight to her chest. Those big eyes, her flowing, brown waves, even the way she moved brought floods of memories back of the girl I’d loved. I knew I couldn’t lose her again, I would do anything to make her mine.
I stayed nearby for days, watching her. She was always alone, always unhappy and clutching her doll. Her family never seemed to watch her or even care, but I could tell even from a distance that she was a loving girl. I decided to leave my cloak and staff behind, and crawled on the ground, whimpering pitifully so she would notice me at the tree line. She did, and she came to me without fear, dropping her doll nearby, her soft voice cooing and asking if I was hurt. I didn’t speak, and let her pet my fur and search me for wounds. Finding none, she decided I must be hungry and rushed off, leaving her doll behind. I took it and returned to the woods. I had my bait.
The next day, the girl was sitting on the ruined fence again, this time with her attention on the trees. She was waiting for me. This time, I emerged in my cloak, staff in one hand and her doll in the other. I held it out to her, and she only hesitated for a moment before jumping down and running over to take it. I expected her to run away, but instead she gazed up at me with her doll clutched against her. Again, I didn’t speak, just gazing back into her warm, brown eyes as harmlessly as I could. After a couple minutes, she went home.
For for several days I coaxed her near, and she began offering me scraps and becoming more comfortable in my presence. I always made sure to stay out of sight of the villagers, even though none of them paid much attention anyway, and the girl seemed so accustomed to being ignored that she hadn’t said a thing about me to anyone.
Then one morning a group of kids approached the girl while she was on her way to our meeting place. They taunted her, calling her weird and evil, and she simply clutched her doll and stared at the ground. One of the bullies snatched her doll, ignoring her cries, and they tossed it between each other out of her reach as she screamed and pleaded and tried to grab it. I knew I couldn’t interfere, or they’d run screaming to their fathers and I would be hunted, never able to see the girl again. I could only watch as the kids tormented her, before finally ripping the doll limb from limb and tossing it in the dirt. As they laughed and walked away, the girl fell to her knees, dirtying her white stockings as she clutched the pieces of her doll and sobbed.
When she was totally alone, I approached and knelt beside her, and she suddenly hugged me tight, little fingers gripping my fur through my cloak. Through sniffles and coughs she told me how everyone sees her as strange, and how she doesn’t belong anywhere. I chose that moment to finally speak, telling her she doesn’t have to stay. I would care for her, and never treat her badly. She didn’t even flinch at my growling, raspy voice, and nodded without hesitation.
I carried her away, all the way back to my cave. I made a bed for her out of furs I’d gathered from my hunts, and slept curled around her at night. I used materials I’d stolen to make her a new doll, and learned to make dresses for her. She never once acted as though she missed her old life in the village, and nobody came looking for her. As she grew, she learned how to tan hides, cook, and care for herself while I hunted and lurked the village. And most of all, she cared for me.
When she grew into a young woman, I took her hand and asked her if she would be my wife. She agreed right away, as if she’d been waiting for me to ask all along. I made her a dress out of the best white fabrics I could find, and we had our own ceremony under the moon. The strange, hooded figure had been wrong. I found love.

Years passed, and life was peaceful for a long time. We cared for each other, and gave each other everything we’d been missing from our old lives. I had almost forgotten my curse, until I started to notice a hitch in her step, and a slowness to her movements. Her brown hair was faded and graying, and her eyes weren’t as bright. She was dying, and I had not changed since the day I was transformed.
I woke up next to her one morning to find her cold, her doll held against her chest. I saw the girl I loved beneath the silver locks and wrinkled skin, and wept. It felt like days had passed before I finally carried her out of the cave and found a place to bury her in the forest. I chose her favorite spot beneath a willow, and dug until my fingers bled to give her the perfect resting place. After I lowered her in, I considered keeping her doll to remember her, but I wouldn’t dare take it from her hand. I buried her with her favorite possession, and after the last bit of dirt was placed over her I suddenly felt lost.
Footsteps lifted my gaze from my torn hands, and there stood the hooded figure. There was no magic this time, just their silent stare from the darkness of their hood. I was able to get a clear look at them as they stood there, and noticed their cloak appeared to be made of deep green moss. Twigs, sprouts, and small bits of fungi grew from the cloak, even reaching from the eerie dark of the hood. I realized then, this must be a Druid or some forest spirit, and I’d angered them when I killed my first love.
I fell to my knees, staff dropped to the dirt beside me, and pleaded for relief. Death seemed a better fate than an eternity of suffering, and grieving over the deaths of my beloveds. I felt that because I’d given an abused girl a better life, I’d atoned for my crime. I asked them through desperate sobs, what I could possibly do to be free. Where would I go from here? What could I possibly do with an eternity? Still, they stared in silence, unmoving.
I screamed my pain, a terrifying mix of a roar and a mournful howl, shaking the trees around me and sending birds fluttering into the air. The forest seemed to be holding its breath as the last echo faded, and I stared into the void beneath the hood. A tightness gripped my chest, far gentler than the first time I’d felt their magic, but enough for me to gasp. I held my stare as our minds touched, and I felt a depth of sorrow to rival my own mingling with the icy grip of death. I knew that this creature had their own hell they couldn’t escape from.
Suddenly the stranger lifted their head enough for the sunlight to reveal what was beneath the hood. A cracked skull stared back at me, sprouts and mushrooms pouring like tendrils from the eye sockets, thin vines and roots the only thing holding the pieces together. She’d been beautiful once, I sensed from her mind’s touch. She’d been in love, and found out the hard way that the man she adored was evil. He’d lured her into the woods to take her life after weeks of courting, relishing in the fact that he’d owned her mind and heart before he took the light from her eyes.
She’d had a skill for magic in life, a secret she kept from everyone she knew, and in an attempt to save herself she poured all of her energy into a healing spell. Her wounds were too great, however, and instead the magic poured into the surrounding plants and fungus. It consumed her, entangling with her corpse and turning her into the thing she is now. She exists only to guard the forest and punish evil, and my crime was unforgivable to her. She would not let me go, ever.
More soon!

Pet Treasure

Pet Friends