When someone says “Run!” while you’re lost in the forest, you fucking run.
“What?” I asked and turned around, waving my weapons like a cretin.
Crystal bolted, the flickering flame of her torch quickly disappearing among the trees until it was little more than a glittering spark.
“Fuck!”
There were things circling me. Rustling the leaves. Snarling. Growling.
Eternity flew above my head and I really wish it didn’t. A lot of reflective eyes gathered at the edges of the light. A gap remained in the direction of Crystal and Tusk’s escape, but it quickly narrowed.
A clean escape looked impossible.
Fight, flight, or freeze and die. I had few choices, but my MP bar was full at least. I could get a good half-minute of [ADRENALINE SURGE] so I wasn’t entirely defenceless. My instinct, honed for all of three days of bumbling from crisis to crisis, encouraged me to square up. It was just more bullshit to top a stable of a day.
I’d already survived headcrabs, murderous mushrooms, hallucinations, and a fucking thieving goblin. I was tired, sore, still seeing a cartoon squirrel, and had had enough of this fucking forest after less than a day in it.
“Okay.” I breathed out, hefted my weapons, and stared straight into the first set of glistening yellow eyes. “Come on. I do need a cloak.”
That was a daft thing to say, given how I had no idea what the eyes were attached to, how many teeth I was about to subject myself to, or even if the things had fur, but the bluster made me feel better. It had been just that kind of day that needed a nice shower scream at the end. In the shower’s absence, a fight to the death would have to suffice.
“Eternity, can I get a fucking bright light this time?”
I gritted my teeth as I spun in place, trying to count the eyes. There were easily a dozen pairs, and more glinting farther out, and who knew how many more hidden by bushes or trees.
Eternity landed on my head and let out a puff of smoke. Its head was glowing.
“Omnidirectional?”
At least the question was useful this time.
My answer turned into a squeak of terror as something spectacularly hairy advanced through the bushes and came into Eternity’s cone of light.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
For one thing, it wasn’t hairy. The fuzz that had caught the light was moss, not fur. I knew this with certainty because its skin was bark and its limbs were branches. It was an ent, or something similar enough to it. A gnarled face stared at me from beneath those two glistening eyes.
The trees were coming alive, twisting and turning, monstrous shapes breaking out of trunks as if hatching from strangely shaped eggs. Wood creaked and cracked beneath their mossy skins. They each rumbled and growled, the sound rising to a motor-like droning.
Eklil had tried to warn me. He could’ve tried a little harder.
“I am not equipped for this.” My sword was sharp enough, true, but these woody things looked hard to crack into.
They approached and I backed off.
Would ents bleed? Would a cut even hurt them?
Did they really need to hurt me?!
I was meat and bones and all the other gristly bits. Why would a tree want to eat me? Didn’t they get enough sunlight or some-such?
Then one of them opened a mouth the general size and shape of a lightning strike and I stared at frighteningly sharp teeth. Not wooden teeth, but real nubs of jagged bones, wet as anything. Okay, the tree creatures looked ready to tear shit up.
My back hit a tree and the forest suddenly felt cramped and tiny. I clenched my jaw, tightened my grip on sword and stick—fat use that one would be—and drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“On my mark.”
I was going to hit them with an Eternity flash, activate [ADRENALINE SURGE], then haul ass. If something got in my way, I’d see if the sword was any good at killing them.
They drew nearer, a whole forest-worth of the things shuffling my way, mouths open, eyes sparkling. There was still a tiny gap between them, probably in Crystal’s direction. I’d try and make my escape through there.
“Now—”
A howl cut my command on its final sound and a dark, muscular shape slammed into the nearest tree creature with a bark-shattering impact. The gnarled thing toppled sideways and hit its neighbour. They unbalanced together and fell to the forest floor in a tangle of leafy limbs. More of the others turned at the commotion.
With a huge roar and snarl, Tusk slammed into another of the monsters, not as hard as before, but still enough to draw eyes to him. Claws made of splintered branches raked the air in his direction, but the old molerat was as spry as a kitten. He pranced around like a playful pup, leapt at one of the monsters and crunched down on a limb.
I had to pick my jaw off the ground at the display as attention was fully drawn from me.
“Stinky human. Duck!”
I hit the ground just a moment before an arm like a bundle of ropes whipped the space where I’d been standing like a dummy. I rolled just in time not to be stomped on.
Their movements were slow and ponderous, but I could feel the vibrations in the ground with each slamming step. Their strength was no joke. If I caught a single one of their blows, my bones would be dust.
I rolled awkwardly, hindered by my backpack, weapon drawn tight against my chest as the ent kept trying to slam a log-like foot down on me. More of them left Tusk alone and made grabs for me.
Say one thing for Tolkien, but he knew jack shit about tree people. These had no patience at all! When they couldn’t grab me, they started pounding the ground with their feet and fists. Food mulched into the soil was likely just as good for them as swallowed whole.
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“Over here, stupid.”
I forced myself up on my knees, then my feet, then turned to the direction of the voice. Crystal was flanked by two of the mossy creatures. She was waving her torch around, holding them at bay. Tusk leapt onto the back of one of them, clamped his jaws around the pointy, leafy head, and ripped it straight off the shoulders. Bright yellow ichor geysered up into the air.
It smelled of honey.
I didn’t waste time delighting in the sudden sweet scent. Instead, I threw myself towards Crystal.
The second creature swapped its attention away from her and back on to me. I swung with my sword at its head as I approached, leaping with the motion. The blade buried itself deep in the bark and stopped almost halfway through the cut. I ended up swinging on the end of the blade, fist tight against the handle.
For a heart-shuddering moment I thought I’d end up having to ride the thing. Then the blade wrenched free with a ear-splitting scraping sound.
I have no idea how I managed to land on my feet and not my face.
Forward momentum carried me stumbling forward, straight to the gnark. Crystal turned around, whistled, and began running.
“Keep up, human. Do as told.”
I did! Breathing like a steam engine, I pumped my feet as hard as I could, running as if Hell itself chased my ass.
Tusk barrelled past us at a leaping run, muzzle still spraying yellow sap everywhere. I kept after the molerat with every ounce of my strength. To my surprise, the gnark was pulling ahead easily, slowing from time to time to wait for me. Bloody Crystal was much faster than I’d given her credit, and far more courageous. I hadn’t expected to ever see the gnark princess ever again, much less to my rescue.
“Why’d you. Come. Back?” Every breath was a labour while I struggled to keep pace with both molerat and gnark. They didn’t show any sign of being tired or even inconvenienced by the constant brushes, roots sticking out, low branches or, as one case demonstrated, the occasional squirrel too slow to get out of the way.
“Stupid human has food.” Crystal eased her pace and matched mine. “If tree fathers eat human, they eat whole. No more food. Stinky human owes Crystal more food.”
“I’ll. Pay. You. In food.”
Crystal suddenly shouldered me aside and I ended up tumbling through a bush, thorns snatching at my skin. I probably fell in some droppings, given the sudden stench.
Another of the trees had sprung on us, this one a younger-looking thing, much faster and more aggressive than the others. It waded through the bushes, swinging its arms and lashing the greenery.
“Futu-?i mor?ii m?-tii!”
Spitting blood and cursing, I dragged myself away through the undergrowth on hands and knees, the thorns digging long gouges into my arms and neck.
A foot crashed down a pace away from me. I rolled and got myself entangled even worse.
“Eternity, light,” I cried out as I stared up at the outline of the creature, lit from behind by Crystal’s torch.
I shut my eyes tight as Eternity turned the night to midday on Arrakis. It bought me precious seconds as the tree father faltered. Its next step fell away from me, followed by a loud, heavy thump as it toppled.
Thrashing, squirming, swinging the sword, cursing, bleeding and panting, I managed to cut myself free of the thorns. I rose through the bush’s ruin just in time to see the large wood creature stagger back up to its feet.
With [ADRENALINE SURGE]-fuelled courage, I leapt and brought the sword up in a double handed swing. For once I didn’t fucking miss! The blade cut just beneath the jagged lump that looked like the tree father’s head and almost went cleanly through. Almost. This was work for an axe, not a sword.
I planted my boot on the the monster’s shoulder as it moved in slow motion to rise, yanked out the sword, then swung again, aiming for the same cut. Naturally, this time I did miss but gouged out a hard chunk of woody flesh. The monster’s mouth was opening as my MP bar drained to near nothing.
A third chop parted the head from the rest of the body in a spray of yellow, sticky sap.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: TREE FATHER SAPLING x1]
I blinked the notice away and the blotches of after-light still staining my retinas. Crystal was frantically waving at me with her torch, moving in normal speed while the surge was still active for me.
Before I stumbled over to her, a glint off the corpse caught my attention. Something stuck out from the… well, from the throat stump. As the body was still tumbling down in that elongated moment, a bright green crystal was pushing out through the wound, drawing in the sap like a sponge. It smelled nice and glowed a sickly mucus yellow.
My MP bar was almost down to nothing and shapes lumbered through the undergrowth, more by the moment. I only hesitated for a moment before reaching for the crystal. Hot to the touch, the surface slightly sticky, it snapped off from the stump with a wet sucking sound. With my surge on its last two seconds, I didn’t waste time sticking the thing in my backpack. Instead, I sprinted towards the gnark and we took off down some trail only she could recognise.
Tusk joined us from the undergrowth with a large branch clamped between its jaws. I noticed only in passing that one end of the thing was leaking yellow sap. Together we ran as hard as our feet could carry us in whatever direction Crystal chose.
What a fucking day this had been! I’d ran more than ever in my life, fought weird shit, been swallowed by stuff, hallucinated, continued to hallucinate, and now I was running from trees of all things. Part of me wished Eternity had actually dragged me into Wonderland as that shit would’ve made more sense than Oresstria.
By the time we slowed to a jog, then to a shuffling walk, my mood had turned abysmal and I found myself jumping at every shadow, creak, crack, or snuffle from Tusk. Eternity floated above us, lighting the way a good deal better than Crystal’s torch could. The light bounced off leaves in a way very different from before, giving this neck of the woods an almost fairy-like charm.
I was not in the mood to appreciate it.
“Stop here, stinky human.” Crystal broke the silence and halted me just before I stepped into a clearing in the forest.
Only then did I notice that we’d arrived at a place where the light beyond the trees was different somehow. While the forest was pitch black outside of Eternity’s sphere, the clearing before us shone. No, I realised, that was the wrong way of thinking about it. It was as if it were bathed in the light of the moon, but there was no moon in Oresstria’s sky. There weren’t even stars at night, just a vast, endless expanse of black.
In the middle of the clearing rose a hill with a large, round door in one side of it. A lantern hung on a support next to the door, a flame burning faintly inside the grimy thing.
“Eternity.” I gestured for the dragon to return to me. “Why does it look like it’s less night in there?” In spite of my best efforts, I couldn’t figure a better way of describing it.
Crystal had stepped into the clearing, followed by Tusk, and made her way towards the lantern.
“There is a ward in place,” Eternity answered. “Not a particularly powerful one, but it would be uncomfortable to cross this threshold.”
“Huh. Our friend’s not as silly as I thought.”
“Looks deceive,” Eternity agreed.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me about Crystal’s skills and the like, right?”
Eternity landed on my shoulder and let out its customary puff of smoke. Around us, the Brightleaf was deadly quiet and the air smelled of a chill already rising from the ground, filled with scents of moss and fir tree and the ever present flowers that I couldn’t see.
“I cannot give you information that is not readily shared by anyone interfaced,” Eternity finally said. “If that information is shared, then you wouldn’t need me to relay it to you.”
I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. Coming off the adrenaline, all my cuts, scrapes and bruises now hurt. For the first time since arriving, I felt bone tired and wrung out, at the literal end of my endurance.
There wasn’t much time to work myself into a paranoid knot before Crystal reached her lamp and blew out the small flame inside. The clearing was swallowed by Oresstria’s impregnable night.
“Stinky human, come come.” Crystal waved with her torch. “Come come, or be left outside with the tree fathers.”
I stepped forward and, moments later, the light returned as the lamp was lit.
A sense of profound loss hit me. Eternity was still on my shoulder, but I felt as if I’d been cut off from it, like when I’d gone into the dungeon.
“What’s going on?” I spun and looked back towards the forest, suddenly feeling watched
Ice-blue eyes met mine, shining among the trees. A shock of snow-white hair framed a ghostly pale face. Human. Female. Brow creased into an expression of absolute anger.
I’d seen that face before.
I blinked and the apparition disappeared.
“Uh… Eternity…”
“You did not hallucinate, no.” Again, the dragon’s voice filled with distorted echoes as if it came from a miscalibrated old radio. “Go inside, Klaus. You’ll be safe here.”
“Safe from what?”
“I cannot say.”
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