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Chapter 217: Eve
🕑 Added 2024-03-13 14:00:16 +0000 UTCApparently the little elementals could shoot ice spikes.
The first sunk into Mason's back before it broke off. He cried out and spun, seeing a few drops of his blood stain the white floor. Then he growled and charged the shooter, stepping over symbols as he deflected another spike with his Sleeve. Then he Predator Struck the little bastard into oblivion.
Ice and bits of stone shattered as Mason's longer blade severed straight through its torso, then he launched the lower half flying with a vicious kick.
More spikes were hissing in his direction, so he rolled on a spot without symbols and activated Aspect of the Cheetah to keep moving. He'd left his bow behind, expecting it didn't have the punching power to help him much. But he suddenly wished he could try some fire arrows.
The bigger guards were moving now. One lumbered straight in his direction, hands extended like a giant zombie about to cry out for brains. Mason grabbed the closest elemental, tore off its arm with brute strength, and hurled the damn thing at the guard.
It broke apart as it struck, which was satisfying, and reminded Mason vaguely how insane his strength was becoming. But it didn't seem to hurt the big guy much. Still, he decided the tactic had potential.
He jogged in careful circles around the platform, dodging ice spikes, avoiding symbols, grabbing little elementals with his bare hands, and tossing them. By the third throw he started to wonder—could he infuse them with an exploding trap?
The answer, unfortunately turned out to be no. But then he wondered: what about their pieces?
The heads were good and round and looked fun to throw. Mason grabbed an elemental, ignoring its arms and getting ready to pull. It punched him square in the chest, fist smashing so hard it made an echoing sound in the cavern. He supposed it hurt. In a pathetic, pre-apocalypse kind of way.
Mason snorted, and ripped off its head.
He infused it with an exploding trap, which worked just fine. Then after a useless Ranger's Mark that pretty much told him he was fighting a giant piece of moving stone, he tossed it at the guard's hip.
This time the thing exploded, sending shrapnel flying, one even hitting Mason in the cheek. When the smoke cleared, he looked at the slow-moving guard and saw a few cracks in the stone on his leg. Then he grinned.
"Alright, boys, here we go."
Mason spent the next few minutes turning murderous living rockmen into baseballs. They just kept coming, and shooting, occasionally sending an ice spike shallowly into Mason's flesh.
Once or twice he stepped on a symbol, which unsurprisingly sent a shocking burst of cold energy flaring up his leg.
But it was just more pain and a bit of numbness that didn’t stop him. The big guards seemed to have no way to hurt him unless he got closer. And the little elementals were almost cute.
He cheered when the first guard's hip broke apart, the creature crashing to the ground. After his experience with the greater earth elemental, he half expected it to re-construct itself. But all it did was try miserably to crawl.
A few more minutes of adrenaline-fueled work, and Mason had knocked both guards to the ground. He summoned his Claws and circled them, slashing their heads in bits and pieces as he avoided spikes and symbols. In short order, the crawling guards stopped crawling, too, their giant bodies still as statues.
The hum of arcane energy vanished, the symbols on the floor fading as the smaller elementals collapsed and stopped summoning.
[Heart Guardian event: complete. Experience awarded.]
The gate opened with a creak.
* * *
Mason knew the tree sensed his presence. As he entered its inner sanctum, he felt its turmoil and terror, anger and confusion. He put a hand to the wall and activated Speak with Nature, trying to soothe it, to tell it he was here to help.
Frozen fury burned his skin. The 'connection' he had felt with the previous trees wasn't even attempted, the tree's mind closed and guarded.
Perhaps with more skill, or the right spells, a druid like Mason could overcome such a thing, but he had no idea how. So he walked towards the heart, his hands stretched out like he was trying to approach a skittish horse or a wild dog.
A scream stopped him. Horrible and feminine. It echoed throughout the cavern, and Mason's mind filled with more images—this time insects burrowing into his body, using his warmth and life to grow their eggs, to grow the corruption that would kill him. He blinked it away.
"I'm not like them," he called, turning on Blessing of Gaia. "I'm here to help you. I want nothing from you."
The voice laughed. Sick and desperate, full of bitterness and hate. The image of a beautiful woman’s face flashed in Mason’s vision, skin white as snow, eyes a light and lifeless blue.
Another wind erupted around the sphere, this one glowing blue and swirling with shards of ice.
"You can hurt me," Mason said. "But you can't stop me."
He stepped into the frozen maelstrom, covering his face as the debris smashed into him at incredible speeds. Some of it cut, but most broke against his flesh as he pushed step after step towards the sapling and the sphere.
Then he was through, and the wind stopped.
Instead Mason felt the warmth and life of the tree. He touched its stem gently, his other hand on the scarred sphere as he concentrated on his power.
The tree recoiled, then seemed to sense his power, and grasped it. Mason stilled as he felt like an icy fist clenched around his chest. The voice became the muffled gasps of a starving animal, a creature dying of thirst gulping at a glass.
"Easy," Mason hissed, trying to fight it and keep the process steady.
He failed quickly. The tree's desperation was like nothing he'd ever experienced. He felt suddenly starving, frozen, exhausted. And the test had just begun.
It sucked the strength from his body so quickly, so hungrily, he barely noticed his powers flashing, his hand on the sphere instead grasping his nymph charm.
He imagined Becky and Haley and Blake all alone. The settlement without him, overrun by goblins or walking dead, a silicon god watching from above as it laughed. Not today, he thought. A God damn tree won't kill me. Won't make my child an orphan. I have more to give. Just a little more.
He charged his mana without knowing why, no spell imagined, no purpose except for something else to give. But as he did he felt warmth flow from his arms. No, his Sleeves. He trembled as it spread, channelling into a spell he didn't know or understand, except maybe deep in his bones in some nameless, ancient way.
The words Inner Fire trailed across his eyes, and he knew it was a natural protection spell he could channel. It protected him from magic, from cold, and even burned away poison and disease.
As his mana drained he could sense the urgency of the tree diminish. It was slowing its pull at him now, like an infant that had eaten its fill, blinking sleepily as it watched with curious eyes.
He saw the white sphere was gaining color—a dull green returning also to the walls, to the floor. His mana ran dry, head thrumming with warning as he ended the spell. But it was over now. He’d made it. He could feel the tree awakening.
The sphere opened, and the same pale-faced woman he’d seen in his mind stood and stretched like a cat from a long sleep. A fleshy pallor returned to her face, blue eyes gaining contrast and life, finishing in a beautiful grey. The ice all around her feet began to melt, and she stumbled forward. Mason caught her.
"A druid?" she said, voice fearful and confused. She shivered in Mason's arms and clutched herself to his chest. "Thank Gaia for your warmth. What's happened? I'm so weak...I don't...my memories are...confusing..."
"Eabha?" Mason used the gnoll’s word. “Is that your name?”
The woman’s mouth split with a radiant smile, and something like a giggle at his expense.
"You can call me Eve," she said. "It would suit your tongue better."
Mason smiled sadly as she looked at him, seeing a haunted intuition behind her beautiful, deep eyes.
"Do you want to remember, Eve? I can show you."
She clenched her jaw, then nodded.
Mason did his best to ignore the creature's full, half naked figure pressed against him, her long, golden brown hair spilling over his shoulder. It felt wrong to cause something so beautiful so much pain, but he tried to open his mind, activating Speak with Nature as he held the woman's hand.
"I would want to know," he whispered, not sure what else to say. "I'm sorry."
He used Speak with Nature, and watched as the images flickered, this time from his mind to hers. Eve shuddered and stared, pupils flicking back and forth as water formed in her eyes.
When it was over the tears leaked down her cheeks, her body wracked by a sob as she wrapped her arms around Mason.
"Thank you, druid," she managed, and Mason sat and held her in his lap.
[Objective complete. You have cleansed all the divine trees of the Great Forest. Reward: Wyrdwalking. Experience gained.]
[Druid Class power gained: Wyrdwalking. Step easily between sacred trees and groves. Walk in the fey paths of the ancients.]
[Title gained: Shepherd of the Great Forest. You have restored the great forest’s divine trees. +2 mental statistics.]
"You're safe now," Mason said with a small smile, no intention of moving until she was ready.
For the first time maybe, as the millennia of images had flickered again for Eve, he felt the insane reality of immortality. He too could live so long, could see the rise and fall of countless lives, countless tribes. Whole civilizations.
"We'll make it right," he whispered, trying to accept that reality, that burden. "We'll make it right."
Eve wept and buried her face in his chest, clinging to him like a liferaft.
