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Forests, home of brigands and boars, wolves and witches. Forests, the last place most people want to spend any amount of time in without being compelled to do so. Only kings make such a place their play park. Air headed and arrogant, trusting in their expensive guards, their expensive steeds, and their expensive weapons.
It is especially wise to not be stepping into Russian forests, in which countless souls perish from a variety of horrors not found elsewhere.
One day, as autumn draws to a close, a specimen of a sort even more delinquent than the bad sort of king, that being the layabout beast known as the king's eldest son, is waltzing his way through a farmer's market outside of Saint Petersburg, the reason for this being that he's been sent there on a diplomatic mission. Or what has been described to him as a diplomatic mission, but which is in reality a ploy by his father to get him married. Since if his intended were to arrive on the shores of England, the young man would only run to one of his many merry bolt holes in that green and pleasant land, the thought goes that he will be unable to do this if he is stranded in a land as vast and dangerous as Russia.
So far it's worked, and he has exchanged a curt hello with his cousin at a palace party, and he has not run away or begun a civil war. She is even trailing after him through the market he's browsing.
“But Kevin, if you marry me, you might even be tsar!” Calls a blonde princess to the back of a blond prince standing three feet taller than she does, the pair of them high stepping through the mud and over the hay covering the street.
“I don't want to be tsar, thank you very much. Sounds like a lot of work for very little return.” answers Kevin the Tall, stiffly. Kevin the Great, more like. He's suplexed a variety of fiends and their horses during glorious single combat. The giant plucks a green apple out of a barrel, suffering flashbacks to that one time a mirror told him he was the fairest of them all, leading to his step mother attempting to assassinate him. It's extremely difficult being beautiful, extremely agonising, which is why he has taken to always wearing a knight's helmet with its visor down, so as to mitigate the curse somewhat.
“But, Kevin-”
Tossing the apple back in its barrel, the prince studies a nice marbled slab of pig flesh offered to him by a gap-toothed farm boy, then swings round, his fabulous blue cloak cutting to ribbons a passing peasant, his footsteps quaking the ground. “You know what? I'm going hunting. A boys-only pursuit. See you later.”
The princess’ pretty face falls, and her shoulders slump, her whole body showing her dejection. “Awww, okay…but Kevin, don't forget the party tonight!”
Kevin doesn't answer, swinging his bulk onto his hefty yet elegant white horse, and racing off, towards the furthest forest he reckons he can wander through without becoming catastrophically lost.
🐗🐺🐗
Halfway to yon dark and gloomy forest, it occurs to the prince, the eldest son of an emotionally and physically absent father, that he has brought no weapons along for this hunt. Then, once the waves of the trees are about to be upon him, he recalls that, no, he has brought deadly weapons - his fists and his body in general. Whistling with the joy of expectation of a fight to come, he slows down somewhat and urges his steed into the army of trees, where anything could be lurking.
And anything does happen to be lurking, because this is Russia. Almost the instant he passes the borders of the place, a horde of giant killer ticks fall out of the trees like great black spiders, landing on him silently. But most luckily for him, his head is covered with a steel helmet, and they cannot immediately murder him by burrowing towards his brain, but get stuck in his thick and luscious hair instead.
That's problem number one, problem number two is that he soon finds himself lost, the trees spreading endlessly in every direction, without break or change. At least it's not the taiga, but still. Light drifts down onto a mossy floor, and Kevin distracts himself from the encroaching terror of the forest by looking for boar scat.
A boar, when he locates one, is problem number three, because pigs are one of the most evil animals on earth. Huge, cunning and vicious, with a taste for man-flesh, the creature, when he chases it into a thicket, turns and fatally gores his horse, catching his leg with its tusks in the process, before fleeing when he staggers to his feet.
“Arg, bastard. I'll eat you yet…” His eyes land on his horse, and well, secretly, with tears. “Poor Bessie. Don't worry, girl, I'll have Daddy erect a memorial to you. ‘Here lies the noble steed which bore the great Prince Kevin on his many glorious adventures. May she rest-”
A noise steals his voice, quite as if it had vacuumed it out of his throat. The noise of a cracking twig, and a ragged huff. Around him the trees spin, rank upon rank, darkness drifting down between them as the sun begins to plunge below the earth. The birds blanket their songs, and the insects cease to buzz.
“Predator…” The prince's beautiful eyes, yellow as a wolf or eagle's, dart from side to side within the depths of his helmet, searching for the creature who made the noise. It's not only wolves he sees himself wrestling to death, but bears and tigers too. Maybe even a moose. Or that bloody pig! It's going to be difficult with a badly injured leg, but he's never lost a fight, and never will.
However, when his eyes pick out the thing that made the noise, they discern problem number four, five, six, seven, eight-
“Huh…Fancy that…” Kevin whispers, before tipping over backwards in a dead faint.
A monster steps out of the half light of evening, silhouetting itself for a moment in the golden glow of sunset, its red eyes blazing with hell fire, its black shape taller even than the giant royal, and shaped like an unholy merger of man and wolf. A man-wolf indeed stands on its back legs, the fingers of its hands wielding claws neither wolf nor man ever did.
When the werewolf comes to a stop beside the fallen prince, it sniffs at him, then gently pushes him onto his side, from where it proceeds to pluck at his hair, throwing the grotesque ticks it finds there into its mouth, its deadly jaws slamming shut on the wicked insects. Once they're all consumed, it tosses the young man over its shoulder, points its dark snout southwest, and sets off at a gallop.
🐗🐺🐗
Something tickles Kevin's neck.
And again.
“No, Bessie. I don't have any sugar cubes…”
The tickling continues and he sneezes, the sound greatly amplified inside his own head by his helmet. The smell of blood yanks his consciousness back into the driver's seat, and Kevin sits up, almost cracking his cousin's skull in the process.
“You're awake! Yay!” She exclaims, tickling him again with the ostrich feather she holds, just in case.
After staring at her for a moment, Kevin looks aside, to the grass on his right. He’s sitting on the edge of the forest, but what most interests him is the dead boar beside him, it's eyes shut tight, it's tongue lolling from its mouth.
“I don't know what happened to your horse, but it looks like you had quite a fight with that pig.” His cousin says, still smiling blissfully.
“What are you doing here?” Kevin asks, once his own tongue consents to obey him.
“You're too beautiful to leave to die, Kevin. I had to come looking for you. Luckily, I didn't have to enter the forest, because I found you here. I bound your wound and waited for you to wake up. And here we are, hehe.”
The prince blinks. “You…came looking for me?”
“Yup! I know you pretty well. I knew you'd pick the Forest of Werewolves to hunt in. I hope you didn't meet any. They eat people, just so you're aware.”
The world begins heaving topsy-turvy, making Kevin's head spin. He steadies it by placing a hand to his steel covered cranium. “Um…call me Kev.”