My character design: The Autumnal. Attached a couple of closeups as well.

The forests, the jungles, the oceans, the deserts, the mountains, the rivers... Nature grows its own cathedrals all around the world. Our ancestors used to worship Nature and live alongside it in a respectful and mutually benefical manner. But at some point that changed, and we, pity humans, started seeing Nature as a lesser, ugly, distant and unworthy entity. Well, at least not all of us. There are still some of us who respect (and even worship) Nature, embrace our role within the life cycle, and still have the forest as a temple to reconect with our roots and the Earth. I'm gonna tell you the story of one of those nowadays "pagans", and how her bond with Nature saved her life... Since early childhood, Alexa had always been a nature protector. She taught her parents to recycle their home garbage, and compost what they could. Later, she dediced to stop buying anything with plastic packaging. Even as a grown woman, she chose natural cosmetics, and always traveled by bike. And at the age of 30 she left her hometown to work as a forest keeper, the job she had trained for through her entire life. But all her preparation couldn't make her ready for what she witnessed during that day's patrol through the dark forest she was getting so familiar with. That spring afternoon, Alexa was tracking down some illegal poachers through the lowest area of the forest. The sky was dark and stormy, and a thin mist fogged the landscape. The humidity intensified the disgusting smell of pollution in the air caused by the mining activities in a nearby quarry. Sadly there was nothing Alexa could do about that, since local authorities kept labeling her as "just a hippie against progress". Suddenly the metallic and mildly musky scent of blood alerted her... But where she expected to find some dead deer or wolf, she found the gory remains of the poachers. She approached slowly and with caution... And when she was just a few steps away from the closest corpse, she noticed the entire forest seemed to be moving around her. The sounds of growlings, screeks, grunts, screams and snorts of countless animals reached her ears like a threatening rhapsody, a maddening cacophony of increasing intensity. Alexa could swear there were hundreds of red bloody eyes staring at her through the fog. The cloudy mist of their breaths sliping through the thickets gave them away. A light breeze started blowing from the south through the valley, and the haze little by little cleared away. That's when she saw it, surounded by the silhouettes of dozens of beasts covered in feathers, fur, and scales. The face of fear itself incarnated, right above the neck of the most dreadful sight the poor ranger could ever imagine. Moss, fungi and lichens grew over its antropomorphic body as they grow on fallen trees, and the mushrooms on its bare feet grazed the forest weeds as it walked. The collection of animal skulls and bones hanging around its neck and waist rattled at every step. The eyeless head of the monster, crowned with a pair of antlers, shooked facing side to side, seeing nothing. The twisted creature pointed Alexa with its bony finger, still dripping the sticky blood of the poachers, and she felt how her entire body paralyzed completely, maybe because of the fear of that ancient entity, or maybe the influence of a dark magic. The being slowly approached her until she could feel its putrid breath on her face. It sniffed her like a hound through the hole where Alexa thought there should be a nose... And the animals slowly turned around and left. Then, from the depths of its throat, and between his crooked teeth, she could hear a gurgling voice rising from beyond the grave saying, like an otherworldy whisper: "Not you". When Alexa woke up next morning at home, after recovering from the shock, she beggan to recall all the stories her grandpa used to read her as a child about the pagan god of Nature ahead of the 'Fianna', the Wild Hunt. Many names has the Lord of Animals: Lisovik, Vestio Alonieco, Leshi, the Green Man, the Huntsman. But perhaps the name that mostly provoked her fear was the one that made her shiver every time she heared it... Cernunnos, the Horned God. * Traditional media: graphite, ink, and color pencils on paper. @MartinTaloneArt 👋🏻 https://smart.bio/martintalone