“Klaus, this can and should wait until morning,” Eternity said.
“Noted. It will not.”
Learned one piece of important trivia: the lamp was movable. It carried its protective field with it no matter where it went, which was interesting for future possibilities, though we couldn’t run with it. The light burning inside trembled with every step Crystal took.
Getting five verdant hearts didn’t sound so bad. Classic fetch quest. Simple. Not that it wouldn’t be a hassle to kill five of those freaky trees, but at least it didn’t have me rethinking my whole place in the universe for once. Crystal wanted tasty rocks in exchange for safety shiny, so Crystal would get tasty rocks and I’d get safety shiny.
Then again, I also didn’t think getting five points of insight was gonna be a big deal, but here we were. I pushed that doubt aside because now was the time to hack and slash away until the sun rose and I worked off some of my restless energy.
“Human so unreasonable,” Crystal grumbled at the fore of our merry little procession. “Impatient. Fool. Going to get us dead.”
“Oh shush, you,” I said. For some odd reason I was in high spirits and eager to find a fight to distract myself with. “You get what you need, and I get my lamp. Nobody gets dead.”
My confidence rode high that night as I kept flexing my fingers on the sword’s hilt, ready to draw it even to just have it out. Either my nerves were shot to hell after the Nobody bit, or I had a lot of lingering aggression to work out, I couldn’t tell right then.
My shield was gone but I still had [Bulwark] for defence if need be, and I’d managed to regenerate my entire MP stock over the afternoon and evening. I kept playing around with the risk assessment, but in that pitch dark it was just as useful as my own two eyes.
The forest remained eerily quiet, almost unnaturally so. There had been more noise when we came in from Harriet’s, but now it was as if the entire place lay deserted. Only the wind rustled some leaves above, but otherwise we were surrounded by absolute, impenetrable silence.
“Eerie,” I commented just to make some noise.
“The quiet is the sign of a revealed Nobody passing through,” Eternity said from my shoulder. “They command great fear. You will always know of a Nobody’s approach by how nature holds its breath.”
“Noted. Should we be worried then?” I asked. “Is it still lingering around?”
“No. If it believed a high-level Protector was on his way here, it would not have remained in the general area. You should be safe, for tonight at least.”
“Unless it’s gone to bring friends?”
Thank you, brain, for that wonderful idea.
“It will not. Nobodies are solitary creatures. They do not like to form into packs, nor share spoils. It goes against their nature.”
Aha. Lovely. Actual vampire-analogues, what with the whole feeding shtick our visitor mentioned. Too bad the closest garlic wreathe was a universe away.
“Human so loud,” Crystal hissed. “You call all forest to us. You want dead so bad?”
Tusk, at least, didn’t grumble. He walked by me, bumping from time to time into my leg. It was almost affectionate, but I could tell the old guy was just sleepy.
It took us another hour or so until the first sounds returned to the forest. Nothing more than the sharp, shrill cries of some bat-like flyers fleeting through the canopy. They flocked to our light, then scattered when the ward pushed them away. Black, furry bats with big, red eyes shining in the dark.
Earlier, I thought I’d heard a deer come to the captive lake. When I finally saw one of these deer, I wished I hadn’t.
Oresstria is a world without a moon and without stars. The nights are nearly black. It’s not quite so bad in villages, with torches and sprite lamps and whatnot, but out in the forest… the darkness is very much tyrannical. Animals are adapted to this tarry dark, but how they adapt…
This thing stalked among the trees, a graceful creature far taller than myself, six-legged and sickly thin. I only caught a small glimpse of it as it glided past, ghostly quiet, and so darkly coloured that it was hard to notice even by lamplight.
It was, however, impossible to ignore the dark tendrils crowning its head. They writhed and wiggled through the air, questing out in a tentacled halo that seemed to touch everything within something like a two meter range. The creature had no eyes and only the vaguest impression of a nose on its horse-like face.
Cthulhu on hooves. Fucking. Terrifying.
It disappeared into the forest quick as an apparition, and left behind a scent that prickled the nose. It gave me the impression that I wasn’t welcomed in that part of the forest.
We got ambushed by tree fathers soon after.
They attacked us just as we got ready to cross one of those random forest streams that bubbled out of the ground. One moment we were going down the bank of that little piss stream, the next there were four tree fathers crowding around our little light, hissing and creaking at its edges.
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Crystal only held up the lamp and waved it about like a burning brand, trying to keep the creatures at bay.
I activated [Iron flesh] and [Bulwark] and dove into the fight without waiting for the creatures to pass the barrier. Could they? A problem to ponder on later.
For now, I rammed into them with the general grace and intent of a rock slide. They’d been so terrifying in the spores-induced terror of a few days ago. Now I saw them far clearer: misshapen creatures, slow and clumsy, far from my idea of a predator. They swung broken branches fashioned into claws. Slow. Unwieldy. Those terrifying, jagged mouths were only dangerous if I stuck my hand inside willingly.
With [Iron flesh] on my left arm, [Bulwark] created an invisible, razor-thin blade, attached to the back of my hand like some assassin’s blade. I buried it into the first tree father that got within reach, aimed at what I considered the general chest area for the creature. Bright yellow sap spurted from the wound and coated my hand. It was cold to the touch, and unpleasantly sticky.
The creature let out a rasp of pain and tried to swipe at me as its brethren crowded around us. I pushed up with my invisible blade, hooked it deeper into this first creature, then slammed my sword into the side of its head. It chopped through the wooden texture with a sharp, cracking sound.
More sticky sap. Another rasp of pain as the blade bit deep. I didn’t have enough leverage to lop the head off, but I did have enough MP to rev up my flame.
The tree father burst into blood-red fire for a brief moment as the flame consumed its entire top half. I kicked at the toppling corpse and immediately swung on the next creature trying to get its craggy hands on me. Fat chance I’d let myself be torn down that easily, especially after the moors fight.
I felt my skills working in perfect unison. [Counterattack] flared to life as I caught a heavy branch on my [Bulwark] arm and sent it aside with a heave, to follow it with a powerful cut to the tree father’s gnarled face. It died gurgling sap, toppling into its brethren.
Two down, two to go.
Unlike the glitch artefacts, these ent rejects actually got it through their wooden skulls that I wasn’t to be fucked with. From confident ambushers to timid defenders in the length of time it took me to destroy their fellows. On another day, that might’ve thrown off my rhythm, but tonight I was in too stellar a mood.
The next two didn’t stand a chance. They were simply too slow to land a blow, much less trip me up. Like chopping wood for the stove. Whack. Crack. Splinter. The fight was over before I even broke a sweat. With a penchant for the dramatic, I could’ve suggested we had kindling for our cook fire.
[Congratulations]
[You have defeated: Tree father adult x4]
No skill upgrades unfortunately, but I wasn’t aiming for that. However, I did get a notification from the Bestiary: sub-variety of the more common entling, tree fathers were the feral, savage cousins that infected silver forests. Dangerous in large groups. Weak to fire. Duh! Deceptively strong. Some grew fruit that could be valuable for alchemists. The younger versions provided verdant hearts as their sap would harden when exposed to air. The older versions provided something called verdant rubber, but only if the sap was collected and stored in a specially-oiled container, else it spoiled.
Neat.
“Human stronger now,” Crystal said as she joined me and set about rifling through the branches of the downed tree fathers. “No fruit here. Useless.”
“I need saplings. These are too old to have verdant hearts.”
I checked my map after cleaning my sword and, sure enough, a new area was marked with tree father danger. It unfortunately couldn’t show me where we’d find the younger varieties, but such was life.
For a brief moment I marvelled at the psychotic thought: Where do I go to find and kill their young? Then I remembered the fucking things tried to eat me just a few short nights before. Fuck ‘em.
“This tree father territory now,” Crystal said with some measure of fear in her voice. “You find many sapling now. Near water.” She clutched her lamp and looked about as if she expected the whole forest to bear down on us. Given how these things liked to pretend to be the forest, it wasn’t out of the question.
This would all have been much better to handle in the light, I realised. But the Bestiary was clear on the matter. Tree fathers lay dormant in the light, indistinguishable from normal trees, and really hard to rouse enough to reveal themselves.
I took a sip of the furnar spiritglow mead I still had from Methol, suffered its ghastly, gassy effects, and watched my MP regenerate. Maybe once I crossed the threshold the cramps would get better. For the time being, they only doubled me over in pain.
“Do I need to find stuff for the lamp?” I asked as I waited out the pain. “Or do you have everything you need?” To my horror, I got an attack of bilious burping.
“Yes, yes, Crystal has. All at home. You need pay. You make lamp. Good trade. Good.”
Given the kinds of things that stalked the night, couldn’t argue against the value of a safety ward. Still expected her to pull the rug out from under me somehow, but for now she’d been honest enough with her trades, if overeager.
“What do you need so many hearts for?” I asked.
I expected anything out of her. But I did not expect the maniacal cackle and full-toothed grin.
“I make bomb. Blow up frump Emerald. Blow up all council of gnarks.”
She looked up at me with that crazy grin on her face. I looked at her.
We agreed, silently, that this was not something I wanted any part of. There was plenty other shit to occupy my time without me worrying about a green lunatic. If she wanted to make bombs, who was I to stop her?
To make the search easier, I tried what Methol suggested. I defined an area around us and checked it with my risk assessment. Nothing. We walked for a while longer, following the winding course of the spring, and I did the test again. Nothing again.
The third time proved lucky.
[Tree father grove]
[Risk assessment: High]
[Warning: Area mana density critically low]
It didn’t look like anything different from the rest of the forest, but then again that was the whole point I suppose. Ambush predators and all that.
I could burn the whole thing if I chose. And then probably die in the ensuing forest fire. But I could do it. And if I had the nuclear option, then I had no fear.
Probably should’ve had some fear. The smart thing would’ve been to mark the map, retreat back to camp, come back in the light and chop down as many of the things as I needed. That would’ve been strategic and safe and the proper way to do a thing.
Unfortunately, as established, I’m an impulsive moron more often than not. It was going to get me killed one day. Or probably even tonight.
A couple tree fathers are fine. Killable.
Half-a-dozen are a bit less fine. Still doable, but I’d be ruining my freshly mended shirt.
Over two dozens of the buggers?
Things went pear shaped almost before I had my sword out. Once in forever, I should probably give myself a sanity check before diving into a fight, hollering like a maniac. Because in this particular case I swung at the one fucking tree in the whole grove that was just a simple, fucking tree.
The twenty or so tree fathers that came alive around it did not look pleased to see me at all.