A strange garbled speech slowly crawled its way into Hakyeon's consciousness, and he blinked his eyes open into a sight worse than any he could have imagined. Directly in front of him he could see a large bonfire, and just beyond it, two hulking, bulbous shapes stood in front of Hongbin. The baker was tied with his wrists behind him, still unconscious from the miniature fight in the woods, his back to a large tree that almost seemed to be wrapping around him to provide a hold for his body. The thing that made Hakyeon's stomach clench in fear and disgust, though, was that strange, glistening appendages had lifted from where the two creature's mouths should be and were currently roaming over the baker's face and head.

He must have made a noise, because one of the creatures dropped its hold on Hongbin and turned to look at Hakyeon. He immediately wished it hadn't; it's eyes were each nearly the size of his fist and when it blinked, it was with a reptilian gloss over the orbs.  There was no mouth to be seen, just those tentacle things, four in all protruding from its face, and as it made its way around the fire toward him, he realized its body was like a slug without a shell. Bulbous, slimy flesh completely uncovered, with no arms or legs, only those things hanging off of its face, looking more like the animal he'd unconsciously likened it to than any sentient being.

It must be what Taekwoon had called a Watcher, he assumed as it stopped in front of Hakyeon and lifted the tentacles slowly, and the farmer jerked his head back away from it in an attempt to get away. His head knocked into something solid for the second time that night, giving a blazing headache immediately, but he fought it off to turn his head and look behind him.

He was bound just as Hongbin was, the tree behind him wrapped so closely that it felt like a coffin. He gave an involuntary shudder at that thought, determined to not die here in the clutches of some enspelled tree, but when he looked back at the thing in front of him, he saw its mouth. The tentacles were held up in the air off to the sides, like snakes ready to strike, and underneath them, the small, almost human shaped mouth was smiling.

"Do not fight your destiny, little human," it said in a garbled, watery voice, and Hakyeon shivered again at the sound and sight. Why was it smiling? "Your mind will be of great use to my siblings and I. Through you we will learn enough of this village and world to be able to grow beyond our small home here."

"Why?" Hakyeon found himself asking, though he could have slapped himself for actually conversing with this being. "Why do you do this? You could just live peacefully with us, be neighbors, we could offer knowledge freely," he continued, though knowing the villagers, he could already guess their reactions to any such creatures. It was Kingdom law, though... any sentient beings must be dealt with by the Knights in any chance for co-existence.

The Watcher gave a slow shake of its head at his proposition, the smile widening as its appendages reached for the farmer's face. "No, human," it said, almost softly, "your minds offer so much more than your words ever could. They give emotion and true thoughts and feelings and experiences... they are small treasure troves to be savored."

Then the tentacles latched on and Hakyeon let out a sharp cry at the sudden pain. His body jerked as he tried to fight back, then an alien feeling pushed inside his mind, soothing him as if to try and make him accept this fate without a struggle. "Never," he growled out loud, and with a sudden inspiration, he butted his head forward to knock it into that of the creature. Pain lanced through his head at the impact, but to his relief the Watcher gave a watery cry and fell back, its appendages leaving Hakyeon's face as it fell to the ground. 

Several of the woody creatures that he had fought in the woods raced forward to attend to the Watcher, limbs made of twisted branches reaching out to try to help it up. The Watcher growled out something in a language Hakyeon didn't recognize, though, and the wooden things stopped on command, all turning to give Hakyeon a flat look from beady black eyes.

He hadn't realized he'd struck the Watcher hard enough to make it fall, but as it rolled around for a moment before finally rising again, he realized that it had no bones. Or at least very few. Its body twisted as it needed it to, and even as his horrified eyes watched, it rose back to face him. The front of its head was now dented, just a bit, as if he had pricked a bubble there, and one of its own tentacles reached up to feel that wound as it eyed him.

"You ma