Tree Guardian

by Andrew Karevik

  The presence of these tiles would breed paranoia in adventurers. Was the long corridor they were walking through a reality or a mirage? I would have quite a few long, seemingly endless hallways throughout this floor, to ensure that they would never quite know if they were in an illusion or actually navigating the dungeon.

  Bypassing the Eternal Maze simply required awareness that one wasn’t actually moving. By leaping out of the tile, the adventurer would be saved from its effects. However, running, walking, crawling or trying to take a long step would not work. The only way to escape would be to get both feet off of the ground. But it would be a difficult jump to make, simply because the tiles were large enough to house six people at once. It might take more than a few tries to realize they had escaped.

  These four new elements were only a small piece of what I had in store. The actual layout of the dungeon would be random. Each room that I designed was placed in a spot that Immix had painted blue, and each trap in a place painted red. This would be the first seed of a possible design. I would clean the paint and send Immix out, again and again, letting him paint wherever he wished as long as he couldn’t see and it was random. For while the hallways would stay in place, each time an adventuring party left the level, the entire dungeon would randomly rebuild itself—using one of the designs that I had logged from Immix.

  To be fair, I had not come up with this idea. The human architect, Thomas, had been working on the Self-Renovating Dungeon concept for quite some time. It would most likely be his greatest masterpiece. The design was complex and required a lot of dwarven machinery in order to pull off, but it would allow for all of the traps and rooms to be placed on a massive circuit. When activated, the traps could be moved to any other place in the dungeon and the rooms could also be swapped out. It was a great way for me to set new rooms in a dungeon floor without being required to spend a ton of magic. I had liked the method that Thomas had developed, but up until now saw no reason to use it.

  Now, Vincenzo’s Humility would be the perfect test subject for the Self-Renovating floor. There would be a total of eight rooms present in the dungeon, with eight other rooms hidden away, unable to be accessed. Then, once an adventuring party would leave the floor, the mechanism would reset the layout, randomly selecting a pattern Immix had created and then placing eight out of the sixteen possible rooms in the dungeon. The traps would be shifted, and the adventurers would be forced to contend with an entirely new experience.

  No matter how many times they returned, nothing would be in the same place. It was truly the antithesis of what Vincenzo wanted. A level that was impossible to map.

  Chapter 19

  I decided that I would wait for Vincenzo to discover the new room. Rather than teleport him there or push him towards it, I would let him naturally find the floor of his demise. He would be less alert that way. So, in the meantime, I focused on other matters, namely the strange collection of prisoners who had arrived in my dungeon this morning.

  There were forty of them in total and they did not appear like any of the prisoners I had seen so far. They were dressed like nobles, and among them was none other than King Leosis. Rather than attempt to enter into the first hallway, these ragged and weary nobles instead huddled together, terrified of what lay before them. Leosis was calling out to me, yelling my name in the hopes of catching my attention.

  As a general rule, I did not listen to the conversations of adventurers, for they were often tedious and inane, so it took me quite some time to realize that someone was screaming after me. I shifted my attention and, indeed, found the King of Oregmyer, no longer wearing his crown and instead bearing a few cuts on his face and hands.

  “Great Tree!” he hoarsely called, “I beseech you, come to my aid!”

  I sighed at the sight of these nobles. Not only had someone broken the rules, it was most likely a regime change. The steady influx of adventurers had kept me well-nourished and I certainly did not want Oregmyer to stop sending me prisoners. However, I could not overlook such a blatant violation of our agreement.

  “What is it, Your Highness?” I asked. My words were a little curt and I probably should not have called him Your Highness, but I had many other things to worry about and this was not something I wanted to deal with.

  “There was a usurpation!” he stammered. A few of the other nobles looked at him as if he were mad, speaking to the air, but they said nothing. “The people, they plotted against me! Rounded us up and threw us in here! My wife! She aided them! That she-harpy betrayed us all!’

  “I am going to be honest with you, King Leosis. I have zero interest in your politics. I just want to know why the agreement has been violated.”

  “Damn the agreement!” Leosis shouted. “We’ll be massacred down here! I’ve never even seen the inside of a normal prison cell.”

  “A damn shame,” one of the nobles in the corner mumbled. “If you had, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “Shut the hell up, Georgon!” Leosis snapped.

  “Sorry, my Liege,” Georgon mocked.

  “Focus,” I said to the king. “I want to know why you were all thrown in here.”

  “Take it up with the queen,” Leosis said. “All I know is that I was dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night, the guards ignoring my calls for help. Then, we were tossed in one by one, while the queen oversaw the whole thing.”

  I sent out an order for Gariatha to dispatch a squad of orcs to escort these misplaced nobles to the Merchant District. They would not be allowed to leave just yet, but there was no reason for them to continually die in the first hallway. I shifted my consciousness over to the throne room of Oregmyer Castle, to check what was going on. If there was a new government taking place, I would have to renegotiate the same deal as before.

  Queen Abri was sitting on the throne, clutching a scepter in her hand. There were hundreds of peasants about, redecorating the interior, taking down portraits of past kings and rulers. I noticed that all of the peasantry had weapons in their possession. Most of these were simple tools, knives for butchering, pitchforks and hammers. But they were weapons all the same.

  I realized that the queen looked to be immensely uncomfortable. She was smiling, but I could notice the weariness upon her face, the concern that she could be killed at any minute. Whatever was happening, it was certainly not of her own design.

  “You may speak to me in your mind,” I told her, reaching out to connect.

  “Who is this? Leo?” she asked.

  “I am the Great Tree that watches over your city,” I replied.

  “Oh, of course. Yes, you must be here because of the sudden influx of nobles in your dungeon.”

  “I am. Did I not warn you about this? No civilians are to enter my dungeon through your power. Now I have forty nobles trapped within, mewling for their mothers.”

  The queen nodded at those words and softly pointed towards the band of peasants who were tearing down one of the red curtains by the window. “It was they who made the decision. Great Tree, if you are indeed a fair and just creature, you would hear my side of the story before bringing your wrath?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You must know that Leosis and I rose to power quite unexpectedly, due to the death of his father. Leosis Senior wasn’t the most popular of men, but he was ruthless enough to ensure the peasantry was kept in check. But when we took the throne, I had different ideas. I wanted everyone to live better lives, to be given rights and be treated with kindness. My husband unfortunately was cut from the same cloth as his father.

  “We fought frequently but came to an agreement. I would be in charge of taking care of the peasantry and he would handle all other affairs. It was going well in the beginning…but then you came along. Your dungeon was, at first, one of our most valuable tools. Adventurers have often been a problem for the peace and prosperity of this city, and the ability to hastily remove them for weeks at a time gave us the order we had been desiring.” />
  I could see her face grow darker as she silently recounted the tale, careful to avoid using words and only talking through her thoughts. “But…the dungeon was terrifying to the population. The peasantry had heard such stories of what was happening within you and feared being sent in. And my darling husband, that idiot of a man, saw this as a way to keep the people in check. He made a decree that taxes would be increased and those who refused to pay would be thrown into the dungeon. Of course, we both knew he couldn’t do such a thing, but the threat was enough to motivate them.”

  “I see. So, your husband saw this as a convenient way to ensure the peasantry stayed in their place.”

  “Leosis isn’t a good leader,” Abri said, shaking her head a little. “And I think he enjoyed the fact that people were now fearing him like they feared his father. It made him feel good about himself. Anyway, I tried to stop him, but he continued to make these threats, going so far as to pronounce judgment on a single farmer who had been badmouthing the throne. This farmer was sentenced to the dungeon, but in truth he was just placed in a holding cell away from prying eyes. And that…fear, the thought that at any moment anyone could be thrown into a nightmare, it…it lit a fire in the peasantry.”

  “They rallied up and overthrew the king and the nobles. But why leave you alive?”

  “They are still citizens of Oregmyer, a city that has had a monarch since its creation. They look to kings and queens for guidance. My own kindness had been noted by the people and so they have seen fit to install me as the one true ruler. Of course, I suspect this will last only a few short days before some clever upstart comes up with a false claim to the throne.”

  “I understand your predicament now,” I replied. “It is most unfortunate, but I suppose this is the grave you two have dug for yourselves.”

  “What of my husband?”

  “I take no joy in watching the unprepared suffer within me,” I explained. “I will have him shipped out along with the rest of the nobles. They are free to go where they please.”

  “And…you will not render me aid?”

  “Are you asking for my help?”

  The queen sighed again. “I do…I do not wish to be so bold in presuming that I can offer you anything of value, but I would very much so like to leave this place alive.”

  I remained silent for a time. Leosis was a fool, but then again I had inadvertently handed him a tool of oppression. My actions had led to this conclusion, but was I responsible? I tried my best to never interfere with the lives of the world outside of my own, for the politics of mortals was not something I cared about. There was the crass side of me, who thought of ways that I could exploit the queen’s power, should I find a way to save her and set the people straight. Yet there was also compassion in heart, urging me to help her out.

  And what of the citizens of Oregmyer? An ill-planned revolution would only cause more trouble, and a civil war could break out quite soon without a coherent leader. It would be possible the city would be embroiled in conflict for years to come, and with that conflict many adventurers would seek other places to offload their gold. I would lose the stream of prisoners who came often. There were many reasons to help the queen. But would there be consequences?

  “You understand these people. What would fix this problem? What could I do to aid you in restoring order?”

  “I would need an army to enforce order. The local militia have sided with the peasantry, or have abandoned their posts altogether, opting to loot the castle and leave. With a military force, strong enough to scare the bad actors, I would be able to restore order.”

  “And your husband?”

  “I will hold the throne by myself; he has proven to be ineffective.”

  “You would betray him?”

  “He is the traitor, I fear. It gives me no joy in banishing him, but that is what must be done to have peace,” she said.

  “Very well,” I replied. “If you can ensure that things return to order, I will provide you with aid. But in doing so, you will become indebted to me.”

  “Of course, I will owe you greatly,” the queen said. “But this arrangement will expire in a few days, so you best move quickly.”

  I focused, casting a spell that created a wall of stone around the queen, sealing her away from the rest of the world. “You will be safe for now. My army will arrive to retrieve you shortly.”

  Chapter 20

  Assembling an army was no small feat. I was, at first, tempted to call upon Gariatha, to summon her orcs to provide me with aid. They would be happy to comply with the task, as the resident orcs were growing bored waiting for the creation of the new realm. The orc tribes had been patient and understanding of my need to delay, especially with my explanation of the threat that was on its way, and as such, left behind a battery of soldiers to assist me as I needed.

  The temptation to make use of the orcs was great, but two things gave me reason to hesitate. The first was the implication of an orc army arriving to a human city to enforce the law. This might end up creating unnecessary hostility between other human settlements and the orc tribes.

  The second reason was the fact that orc warriors who had been cooped up inside of me for almost a year now might not show the greatest amount of restraint when suppressing an insurrection. I could not risk this becoming a slaughter of peasants.

  Instead, I decided that this problem would be a good opportunity for me to test out the creation of my very own army. Ever since the news of the impending Invasion, I began to study the various forms of magics necessary to produce warriors. If I had a large enough reserve, I could theoretically create legions of fighters who could repel the Invasion. There was plenty of reading material on the subject and I had absorbed quite a bit of summoning spells from the majority of wizards who had died within me.

  The first thing that was necessary was to create a plane of reality—a demiplane that would allow for storage of the army when they were idle. These creatures would be thoughtless constructs, built from a combination of arcane magic and my own essence. Each construct would have a spark of my own mind inside of it, allowing me to control them directly and issue mental orders as I watched them move from above. They would know no fear, no emotions, no thoughts. My reaction times were quick enough now to the point where I could plan full-scale actions within microseconds, so I was not too worried about growing distracted during battle.

  This new realm, I named Akr, was a long red desert with burning sands and an eternal sun that kept everything warm. There wasn’t much of a reason for me to decorate it as such; in fact, I could make the demiplane a dark void, but I suppose Tynd was rubbing off on me. Akr would hold my personal army, and the portal would be placed upon one of my branches, where at any time they could come surging forth to defend me.

  I thought long and hard about the image of the warrior that I wanted to create. I would prefer them to look monstrous, unlike any mortal creature. A terrifying visage would intimidate my sentient enemies greatly and would certainly put down the insurrection in Oregmyer. But for the Invaders, it didn’t matter what the army looked like. They were unthinking creatures, at least as far as Yim the dragon believed, so looks would not scare them.

  My first iteration of these warriors would be undead creatures, modeled after the Draugar of my Mother Tree’s home realm. The Draugar were the hideous corpses of those reanimated either by their hatred for the living or by a dark sorcerer. They were often protectors of tombs, guarding the realms of the dead. They would be sufficiently terrifying to any normal peasant, and no one would mistake them for another monster upon this land—for Draugar did not exist in Yehan.

  The First Akr Army would be one hundred strong. They would be adorned with powerful armor and weapons, with ancient runes of might carved into their axes and swords. These runes would represent focal points for my magic, allowing me to quickly cast spells through them. This would give me a direct influence on the battlefield whenever it was necessary. />
  As for the physical properties of the Draugar, I knitted them together using a special type of formation magic that made them impervious to regular weapons. Only blades and projectiles imbued with magic would be able to deal damage to their bodies. On top of that, as long as the Draugar’s eyes were still intact, it would be able to function—no matter if it lost its arms, legs or even its head. They could also pull themselves back together after a short time, as the magic that shaped them would always seek to rebuild itself.

  The only ingredient I was lacking was the ability to grant these constructs advanced skills in combat. Infusing them with the power to do basic actions, like slash, block or push was easy enough, but giving them anything more complex was beyond me. Perhaps I would have a better understanding of how to direct them once they were manifested in the real world.

  And so, I pumped my magical reserves to create Akr and then one-hundred Akr Warriors, forming the First Akr Army. They were grisly, ugly creatures, with bluish skin and a wretched scent. In other words, they were perfect. Any reasonable peasant would see a horde of such beings and quickly give up their revolutionary ambitions.

  Immix found this monstrous army to be quite delightful and took up the role of their standard bearer and musician, marching in front of the army, blowing a trumpet and waving a white flag. The flag, he explained, was to hand to the peasantry so they could wave it back to my army. They made their way through the Feverwood Forest, marching on the newly paved road that led to Oregmyer.

  The reception of this army of ghastly, humanoid undead was enough to cause the citizens of the sprawling city to quickly hide in their homes. Barricades were built, houses were shuttered, and weapons were dropped to the ground. One of the Draugar served as a mouthpiece for me, announcing that they were here on behalf of the queen, to restore order to the city.