We were at Claire’s cottage when Spider and Terminal noticed a bright flame from outside. They went out there to investigate and found her slamming her fists into the ground, her hands bleeding, and crying while laughing, as if out of self-pity. The flame wasn’t warm enough to shield her from the elements. Spider had an idea and stuck her hands into the flame. It was only slightly warm. They tried to talk to Claire, but she ignored us and continued to damage her knuckles. Spider tried to grab Claire’s wrist, but it was searing hot. The fire changed to a bluish purple after a hug and for some reason, the tree near her began to bleed. Harmonia and I came outside together as Claire began to walk into the woods near her. We all followed along.
Claire felt like we needed to see whatever was in the woods and invited us to come along. I carried Harmonia on my back, which is honestly impressive seeing how I’m 4ft 6in and she’s 5ft 5in as we followed Claire. We found a piece of paper in the woods, much akin to a Slender - The Eight Pages note but ignored it. While crossing a bridge, Claire took great care in not bleeding on it for some reason. Afterwards, in the distance, the forest looked worse and worse for wear, which was a theme for this adventure.
We noticed a black trash bag hanging from one of the trees. Upon slicing it open, blood and guts spilled out of it and the horrendous stench of death hit all of our noses like a truck. We continued our trek through the forest of death and saw a lot of trees with various markings and blowflies in our path. All of the trees in our field of vision looked like this. After walking a bit further, a very tall tree with something near the top caught our eyes. I ascended up the tree nimbly, making sure not to fall. I made it up rather quickly and found a human corpse, impaled on one of the sharper branches, with their organs hanging out. Its face was covered in carvings. How did someone carry a whole corpse up here and do this to them..? I screamed down, announced my findings, and wanted to throw up. Spider believed this was The Moon’s M.O., who is... basically Slenderman. I climbed down and continued to follow Claire while carrying Harmonia.
More rotting corpses were impaled on the trees as we continued to follow. Then they began to look more and more disfigured, some even looking impossible. For example, one had twelve arms, another had no face. At some point, the corpses were no longer corpses but instead just bloodied skin on the branches. And then there was nothing but marked trees. As if entering a Spongebob episode, the darkness became even darker and then just pitch black. Advanced darkness.
We felt an immediate sense of dread going further. The leaves became black. Spider knew where we were, the aptly named “Path of the Black Leaves.” Claire began to bleed on the path and continued to walk forward. She paused and looked around. Off the path was an altar. It's on a small table, and it had a purple table cloth. There were two large black candles that burned the same hue as the flame from earlier. There's several animal skulls, and some organs. There's a baby doll with the face burnt off, and there's a stone tablet with symbols carved into it. We continued to follow Claire and as if playing the first Zelda’s Lost Woods, we looped around to the same sight as before. She tried walking further. Same location. She split from the group and ran forward, finding herself behind us. Out of rage, she knocked over the Altar and we heard a loud screech. We continued to walk and found a new clearing.
In this clearing, there were several trees and one that was bleeding. Multiple corpses hung from this tree and in the trunk was a human face. The roots began to move around, and as if on cue, The Slender Man appeared. Claire got bitch-smacked by a tendril. He grew taller with tentacles flailing from his back. The surrounding trees began to grow eyes, and the holes within the trees acted as a voice for them to speak to us in German. "Wenn du nicht sterben willst, kommst du nicht zurück" which translates to “"If you don't want to die, you won't come back." Tendrils came out of the ground and wrapped us all up. Thankfully it didn’t hurt at all. Every inch of my body was covered in tentacles until I blacked out and found myself near Claire’s Cottage once more. It was raining and my body had plenty of splinters on it.
Claire broke down and explained why we entered the Path of the Black Leaves. "I just wanted to show you what he showed me.." We asked who and she said, “The Moon, he took me to the path, and said I was welcome.." The Moon is the Slenderman. I asked why she trusted its words, after all The Moon Isn’t Right, but she didn’t respond. Terminal was shocked that I knew that phrase for some reason. Afterwards, we all made up and forgave Claire for the adventure, then we entered the cottage and dried off.