Silas Salt sat sullenly sulking in his favorite chair. He had picked today to open the letter that arrived on his doorstep over a week ago, and the timing couldn't have been worse. For some reason, the entire family had congregated in the common room by simple chance. His wife Eliza, son Otto, daughter Ella, and uncle Ebeneezer — hell, even the damn baby had managed to find his way in. Never a man to get up from his chair for anything less than sudden death, he followed through with his plan to open the letter. Upon opening, he was given the most surprise he'd had in a year. The letter contained not one paper, but two!
"I see the Capital is trying to save on courier costs, eh?"
His words caused faint glances from the rest of his family.
He made up some nonsense excuse as to what he was saying as to not alert them of his letter, and started to read.
The first was inviting him to the annual royal feast in the Capital, hosted by his grace the king himself. The Salts hadn't appeared at a royal event since Silas understood how far away the barons sat from the king. The next was a letter from the royal bank. He had accrued a coin more debt than they were willing to trust with a baron of his low stature. He thought of what he had put up for collateral — an oil painting of his great-great-grandfather, the very man who had settled the Salty Bog what felt like eons ago. Silas did something that was almost alien for him. With quick haste, he jumped up from his chair and calmly walked outside. The rest of his family looked at him in mild shock, but they were too preoccupied to follow him.
Silas stood outside and looked at the vast expanse of mud, water and moss that he ruled over. In his youth, it was going to be his own little kingdom.
The patriarch weighed his options. Even Silas, in his limited formal education, knew he had no feasible way of producing enough money in a short enough period of time to pay off even half of the debt. He briefly thought about marrying Ella off to a wealthy aristocrat, but he scoffed before he could even finish his thought,
"which person with enough money to pay off my debts with a dowry, would marry the daughter of some podunk marsh lord? She's certainly not pretty enough to win over a man in that sense."
He suddenly thought of the deer again. Its lifeless eyes, the signs of early decay hiding under its fur, the blood. It all made him want to sit down.
Silas stood at a fork in the road with two options, fawn or flee. It was either they take the painting and god knows what else the loan sharks please, or the salts take what they have, march to the Capital, and hope for a miracle.
The thirty-seven year old man gazed out at the land once more. It now all disgusted him. From the house, to the mud, to the moss, to the people.
Silas stepped onto the muddy ground and began walking. Walking. Walking. There was no destination, no point, no way. He walked. Eventually he entered the forest.
While walking throughout the forest he encountered a set of tracks that coincidentally went the exact same way he was going. He paid them no mind. About fifteen minutes into his walk, a sweet smell came from deeper in, and woke Silas from the almost trance like state he found himself in. Curious, he followed the stench.
Upon reaching the zenith of the smell, he came across the old hermit's hovel. He'd seen him a few times when he was very very young and heard about him all through his teenage years and adulthood. The man was technically under his control, even if he was barely seen. He thought that perhaps this old man could provide him with the wisdom he needed, maybe inside of this strange smelling hole, he could find a wise sage that would pull him out of his stupor!
He walked towards the door and opened it. The stench amplified tenfold. What he saw inside of the hermit's makeshift house, was the half-decayed corpses of the hermit, and a furry creature which he couldn't quite identify (its head was unrecognizable).
Silas said nothing. He didn't feel the need to back away, or even gag at the scene that he'd just witnessed. He crouched down and looked into the man's one non-decayed eye, but he realized that he was actually just checking his own reflection. The droopiness of the eye had warped his body into something unrecognizable. He stood up, walked out of the hovel, and shut the door. He took one final look at the dank, putrid air and land that surrounded him. He vowed to do whatever it takes to save this place.