It’s too cold out for this. You’re torn up, bloodied from the fight you put up on the way here, with barely anything on, your wrists and legs tied together and glowing teal gunk surrounding you in a crude kind of summoning ring. The few eyes you can see of the people around you look crazed - the same teal colored gunk applied under their eyes like some sort of makeup or facepaint, eyes wide and bloodshot as they surround you. The sky is barely visible through the branches of the trees that surround you. The night is dark, the moon above just a sliver of a ring, mist rolling around the group and you thickly.

You’re tired. You’re so… damn tired.

The cultists around you hum, surprisingly enough. There’s a rhythm to it. The innermost ring first, then the next, then the next. A soft, rising pulse through the crowd like the waves of a drop of water. In some ways, it’s… soothing, really.

You smell them first. Sweet, warm- A little tangy, like biting into a cherry off the tree on a warm midsummer’s day, with the slight bite of smoke and earthy undertones of leather. It makes you just a bit woozy, like an omega’s heat-scent.

Then you see them. A towering, tall figure, feathery tufts of fur arranged like a crown across their presumed head, soft clouds of fur surrounding the presumed shoulder region like a fur coat. Something long and inhuman drapes from their shoulders like folded-up wings or an oddly furry cloak, tipped with wispy, shadow-like tentacles, a needle-thin body barely hidden from view by this odd armor. But what’s most striking is their eyes- faux eyes, really. As they bend down closer, inspecting your body and flooding the cultists with that oddly warming scent, you can see the ‘eyes’ you saw are a type of illusion, the fur underneath them highly reflective in an eye pattern, a glow of red with teal at the edge coming from the tufts underneath. When they tilt their head to one side, seemingly inspecting you closer, you can see the barest hints of beady eyes hidden under more feathered fur. Other parts of their fur reflects the light as well, lighting the forest floor in a sort of lightshow, making the gunk on the floor and their faces glow brighter than before.

The cultists around you seem to go feral, laughing, letting out little sounds of manic joy as they dance around the forest floor around you, as you start to realize you’re hearing something odd echoing under your fingertips- a song, the little hums of the mycellium under the forest floor. In fact, the forest seems to come alive under their presence, filling your senses with hums and calls and cries of the plants of the forest, communicated through the mycellial network with sudden sharp clarity - a language you can’t understand, but can marvel at hearing in the first place. You feel... too warm, really, but you can’t seem to bring yourself to care anymore, too distracted by trying to understand the little songs you could suddenly hear that you never even knew were there.

One cultist finally approaches with a laugh, placing a giddy, bony hand on your shoulder as they look up at the creature, shaking with manic joy. “Their Majesty is here! They bring us their songs once again!”

The ‘Monarch’ tilts their head, shaking little tufts of some sort of dust into the air, lighting the mist a teal-green, to the laughter of the cultist- presumably the leader of the group, although it’s hard to tell.

“Please, accept our gift-” the cultist continues once their laughter had calmed, lightly shoving your shoulder forward “- and give us your gift in return once more, your Majesty.” The ‘Monarch’ tilts their head slightly, turning their true eye to you again at their words, tilting and turning their head like an owl and inspecting you with true intent this time. You hear a soft trill seemingly coming from under their tufts, and you’re swept under their cloak before you can react.