Laevo
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TCD // (new)Fifty-Five // POV Manning
🕑 Added 2019-03-29 22:11:51 +0000 UTCCouple of continuity issues here, this chapter might very well be moved earlier to around fifty-five or six. Need to figure out when the ambush gets triggered, don't mind me.
UPDATE: Pulled the trigger, this is the new 55. All other chapters offset by one
Manning
First and foremost, the humans I’d accepted as my followers made it out alive. Or I guess it was more accurate to say they made it in alive, as they traversed all the way to “center” of my forest and found the dungeon entrance. The cultists were alarmed to see the refugees arrive in the clearing in the dead of the night, but nobody was surprised. At this point they’d all noticed the flames licking away at the sky over the tree line and assumed the worst.
Melody, the leader of the town, spoke with Gladil, the leader of my faith, and explained the situation as quickly as she could. From the onset to the attack, to the fact that they didn’t seem to follow the villagers into the forest when they’d fled. A very somber silence covered the previously lively celebration, broken only by a wet, hacking cough from one of the people who’d escaped into the forest. Everybody there, including myself who was silent watching on, knew something was wrong.
One of the elves with light blue skin fell over coughing up blood, finally solving the puzzle of who was injured for me. She was carried around the hill and out of sight of the rest of villagers, to create privacy I’d assume, before being stripped to find the wound. Her sister and the dwarven women had followed, both being healers, along with Melody, a woman whose name was Reina, Gladil, and another villager whose name I did not gather but whose profession was an herbalist.
Every single one of them had a grim look when the woman’s shirt was ripped away. Poking out the front of her left breast was a crossbow bolt, barbed and vicious looking, that glared at the would-be saviors with a malicious gleam. Under most circumstances it was a death sentence, the quarrel had obviously gone through her heart or lung, if not both. The water mages knew a slight amount of healing magic, but none of them were healers. The herbalist had nothing with him that could regenerate organs and didn’t know any surgery. The only thing keeping her alive was the fact that she didn’t pull out the projectile and it was still staunching the blood flow.
Gladil’s first reaction was to ascend the hill and start praying to me, or Ash, or maybe the Sylva. Who really knows? At the end of the day though, all three of those went back to me. This time he wasn’t donating his mana, he was just pleading for help. I was his new god, and a god within my own domain, but there was nothing I could do.
“Manning…” Ash could feel my depression setting in, even if she didn’t know what was frustrating me. I explain the situation to her and asked if there was anything she could do?
She bit her lower lip, dragging her bright white teeth across her pale-green lip, seemingly deep in thought. “We have two options I think… dryads are born with a shallow knowledge of healing, and nature magic is better at regenerating organs than water or light would be… but that requires revealing myself. That’s not really a problem but,” She bit her lip a little harder and furrowed her brows like she was making a hard decision, “I don’t know if I could cure such a serious wound, even if I tried. I’ve never tried to heal such a severe wound or a sapient creature before. Besides that, dryads are coveted by sapient races for… reasons.
“Option two is to somehow claim the dying girl, through either dominating her will or a contract, but either one will expose you as a rogue dungeon. One with sapient thought, free will, above ground, and the desire to own a sapient. They might not see it that way, so it’s a possibility to buy their silence I might guess, but we still have no way to communicate for a contract and I’ve never heard of a dungeon powerful enough to dominate and enslave sapient races that visit.
“If only I was a little more powerful, I could travel through the root system of our domain… A dungeon dryad is hard to distinguish from a regular one and it would be easier to explain.” Ash’s lips started trembling as her eyes watered, she was taking the failure a lot more personally than I was. We didn’t really owe the villagers anything, but to lose them within our own domain after we’d decided to protect them, it stung.
“She probably has another hour before she bleeds out, her constitution is very good, and she seems to have sealed up most of the blood flow around the bolt. Ash, don’t cry. Maybe they will figure something out, maybe they won’t. Either way, it’s time for the ambush. We’ll make those bastards pay for trespassing.” I couldn’t bear to see the light green, chlorophyll tears run down Ash’s face any longer, so I redirected my attention to the ambush and triggered it as my group walked beneath the willows.
The original willow-variation sylva, I really needed to either name these things or figure out what their names were, signaled the ambush by grasping several of the men by their necks and lifting them off the ground. As I watched, they were strangled and robbed. Extra branches descended on each man and pulled off any visible jewelry while others rooted through their clothes and stole coin pouches. Weird, that wasn’t something I asked the gaunt sylva to do but something it chose to do of its own initiative.
The entire attack went off without a hitch and I even managed to capture the few females in the group like Cara had asked me to. They had been filling up their water and were easy to isolate and restrain. I wasn’t super happy about what was going to be happening to the women, but they were destined for death the moment they invaded my dungeon anyways so they may as well do some good with their deaths. At the end of the day, we were dungeons now and had to put dungeon improvements before our humanity.
I watched the sylva completely cocoon the 13 women who were in my group with thick willow branches, leaving only their noses free so that they could breathe. The other willow sylva, the one that was spawned by the original (seriously, I need to name these dudes) harassed the fleeing raiders by tripping them occasionally. The sylvas were capable of entering the trees and transferring through touching roots and branches, much the way Ash would be able to when she gets more powerful, so they moved a lot faster than the humans who were lugging their gear and falling over left and right.
I had to admit, the willow tree was much more powerful and versatile after its sylva, or spirit, had awoken. It went from strangling anyone who walked beneath it to capturing and killing at will, with increased flexibility and durability. In a couple thousand years, a large portion of my forest would be capable of awakening their spirit and I couldn’t wait to see what that would be like. I scanned my forest quickly to locate the first sylva. You know what, no.
Silver. I decided to name the first sylva Silver, because of the tree she chose as her hearth tree. If she already had a name and liked it better than Silver, she could try to communicate that to me, but for now I was going to with Silver.
Anyways, I looked for Silver and I found her not too far from the fleeing raiders. She was in a clearing filled with different herbs and plants that I’d created and enhanced. I watched as she fluttered from plant to plant and enhanced their properties farther than I could. I had the ability to inject and guide mana to make the plants more effective, but I lacked that intrinsic knowledge of the plants that Silver seemed to have, making her far more qualified to increase their power. She paid special attention to the ‘Jivy Ivy’ that was handing over the entire clearing, making the colors far more vibrant than they had been before. I couldn’t know the exact effects, but I imagined that nobody would be smoking that strain more than once.
Beneath one of the trees I saw a glowing herb that had the ability to thicken blood flow. It wasn’t literally glowing but glowing with mana. I imagined it was one of the most powerful clotting medicines anywhere near here and wondered if that could help cure the blue elf. If only I had some way to transfer the medicine, a way that didn’t involve telling Silver to pluck an herb twice as large as she was, and zip through the trees at light speed to get there, risking her capture or death.
Wait, that’s it! For some reason I forgot that when the sabbath started and they prayed to me, a small amount of the power they donated was absorbed by Silver’s hearthtree, causing it finally fruit. When I’d grown the tree, I injected the seed with raw silver essence, a metal that conducted light and healing magic very well, as well as an overwhelming amount of water mana to encourage the growth. Growing the fruit had taken too much investment so I’d theory crafted that it would be a healing fruit, similar to the mushrooms Cara had grown and shared the recipe of. Not only should it have amazing healing properties originally, but it had even grown with the aid of the super-rich faith-mana that was being donated to me. To top it all off, the tree was even a sylva hearthtree now, so it everything about it including the fruit should be amazing!
“Ash, I have an idea to save the elf. Remember the silver pear?” She slowly lifted her head from where she was sulking when I started speaking but snapped her eyes toward the tree my core was nestled in when I mentioned the pear.
“Yes! Manning you’re a genius, the fruit actually might help! Oh, but they don’t know what it is…” She started frowning again. I shared my vision with her as we whipped back over to the dungeon entrance. The injured woman was even paler than before, her skin had faded from a rich light-colored lapis to a blue so ashen that it was almost the same color as the sky. Only her lips and eyelids retained any color, looking very dusky and full. She was dying.
“We just need to signal them, somehow. See the shorter human with the dark hair? She occasionally visits the forest and casts some sort of scrying spell on new plants I grow, I am pretty sure she is some sort of cataloger or nature enthusiast. The only reason she hasn’t checked the pear is because she just arrived with the refugees.” I pointed out Reina to Ash, truly believing that she would be able to figure it out.
“I’ve got an idea, let’s try this.” I commanded a nearby squirrel to run into the clearing toward the fallen elf. Unfortunately, everyone there was on high-alert and the squirrel did not get far before being shot by a guard.
“Problematic!” I exclaimed quietly to myself. No matter the creature, they were killed shortly after entering the clearing. Usually this would upset me, but I felt for their plight. I knew what I had to do, I just hoped it didn’t scare the woman to death.
Outside of the clearing, I gathered as many hedgehogs as I could in a semi-circle around where she was resting. All at once, I had hundreds of cat sized rodents charge into the clearing. Naturally this alarmed the few people standing on that side of the hill with the dying elf. They began shooting off spells and arrows in an attempt to beat back the beast tide, but I only needed a few to get through.
The hedgehogs died at a depressing rate and Ash began shedding tears for all the lost life, but it had to be done. The little creatures were not sapient and, no offense to them, less important than saving the life of one of my sapient followers. They bred like, well, rodents, and contributed less and less to the forest as I came into my powers. It was still an unfortunate loss of life, but it accomplished the mission.
Four hedgehogs managed to skirt past all the guards and come to a halt next to the woman lying supine at the base of the hill. Another one managed to flee past them and reach the apex of the hill, climbing on the kneeling Gladil and into his satchel. This woke the man from his prayers, sending him sprawling backwards where he began to tumble down the hill due to his loss of balance.
The rest of the hedgehogs fled as the four near the elf were surrounded. The villagers realized that they held no ill will but continued to brandish their weapons as they stared at the forest denizens. There was an awkward stare down as the ex-ranger continued to tumble, coming to a rest bruised, but otherwise okay, not too far from them. Slowly he opened his satchel, revealing a hedgehog holding the silver pear he’d collected from the hearthtree that night. For a second, the man registered nothing but confusion before it dawned on him.
“Herbalist! Come here, look at this! The forest god has answered our prayers, this must work!” Without hesitating, he plunged his hands into the satchel and took out the palm sized silver gourd, not for a second believing the hedgehog might bite him. The herbalist did not recognize the plant but Reina, the diviner, cast her spell and informed them that it was a very mana potent fruit. ‘Nature and water aligned, and incredibly pure.’ she claimed, ‘a natural treasure.’ Silly woman, everything I grow is a natural treasure.
The fruit was carefully sliced open and fed to the elf, bit by bit, without missing even a single drop of juice. The only thing not ingested was the metallic coating, which Gladil agreed to give to Reina and the herbalist for research. Instantly, the woman’s shallow breathing slowed and then deepened, followed by color slowly returning to her face. All the mages with healing powers surrounded her and, when they were prepared the herbalist was standing by with anti-infection salve, Gladil ripped the bolt out of the elf’s chest. She screamed as the fletching tore through her flesh, lung, and heart.
Water mana was poured into the openings, a couple hands were underneath the elf, doing their best to support the fruit in its work. They could not see into her body, but I was able to observe her organs slowly patch themselves back together as the holes in her skin sealed themselves. The mana continued to permeate her organs and flesh, having an unknown and unobserved effect, but that wasn’t what I was concerned about. She was going to survive, and I now know how powerful that tree was. I was probably going to need to move that one too, but in the meantime, I redirected my attention to the group of raiders. I collapsed their path with the enhanced ivy clearing Silver was improving earlier, it was time to finish this.
