by Simon Archer
I filed that away for later, and I was about to ask another question when I caught a glimpse of something else through the sparkling crystals. The sight sent a shiver up my spine as I squinted my eyes to get a better look… but there was no denying what I was seeing.
Sir Thorpe caught on to my unease in a flash. “What is it, my boy?”
“Smoke,” I growled as I pointed at the billows of black that blew up over a hill not more than a mile and a half away. “A lot of it.”
Petra let out a gasp at that. “Kaulda! That’s Kaulda burning!”
“Then we better get moving.” I drew Libritas as I strode forward. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but whatever it is, we’re going to deal with it.”
7
The majesty of the Sola-filled plains was forgotten as we rushed across the fields. Though Petra seemed to have almost limitless endurance, barely breathing hard as we ran over the rolling hills, Reggie, for all his will, just wasn’t a young man anymore. Kaulda had to be at least a mile or two out, and he just wasn’t going to make it. Was all this rushing just a waste of energy? It was most likely that whatever danger had overtaken the village would be gone before we arrived.
And that’s when I had an idea.
“Hold up, everybody,” I called out as we crested a rise. They both did so, Petra still bouncing on her feet lightly as Sir Thorpe took a moment to catch his breath as subtly as possible. “Petra, I’ve seen you spring up grasses, trees, vines, all that sort of thing, and animate them.”
“Well, yes,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“Can you make them move past their roots? And if you can, how fast?”
It wasn’t a series of questions I never thought I’d ask. I mean, back on Earth, the idea of commanding plants to do anything was insane, but so far today, I’d gone through a magic portal to an alien world with two suns and a rainbow forest to punch out orcs, then bonded with a talking branding iron and a plant girl. I had to think outside the box and, as corny as it sounded, embrace the magic of Etria.
“I can, yes,” the dryad admitted hesitantly, “but…” She frowned a bit. “It’s just that if I understand your intentions, I don’t know if I could ferry all of us with any speed.”
“Pish posh, my dear,” Reggie got out through a heaving intake of breath. “You bound me up with grass. Grass, I say! Far weaker than any of those bulletproof trees of yours! Certainly, you can do this.”
“But that was in the forest, Sir Thorpe.” Petra’s brow knit as her frown deepened, and I could read the lack of self-confidence come off her in waves. “The plants here in the plains are smaller, weaker, and my connection to them is tenuous at best…”
“She can do this,” Libritas pulsed in my mind then. “You felt it, William. She is stronger than she knows, and my rune has unlocked her potential, freed her from her limits. She just needs you to bring that power forth.”
I nodded at that, and even as Petra sputtered out another excuse to mask her self-doubt, I simply walked up to her and put my hands on her shoulders. Her green lips pressed shut as she started from the sudden touch, but before I could even say a word, the dryad started to relax in my hands.
“Stop, Petra,” I said firmly as I locked eyes with her. “You’re not a slave anymore, and you don’t have some corrupt scar on your chest holding you down.” Petra’s cheeks flushed, green mixing with her chestnut skin, and she tried to dart her gaze away, but my next words made her freeze. “You said you’d help us, on your clan’s seed.”
The grass around our feet grew and rustled as Petra trembled, her fists clenching as she spoke. “I can’t. My mother could have, my grandmother, but I’m--”
“Perfect,” I finished for her. “Powerful and, most importantly, freed.” I moved my right hand from her shoulder, trailing down to her chest, her skin perfectly smooth under my touch. Just touching her like this sent sparks up my spine, and that sensation only increased as I stopped on her glowing brand. “Freedom is striving for what you want, for being more than you were, and while I’ve only known you for a short time, I know you want to help those people.”
“Indeed,” Reggie chimed in. “You can do this, Petra!”
The dryad found the strength of self to turn her eyes back up to me, and even though her lips were trembling, I could see the resolve building inside of her. Was that self-doubt gone, that part of her that got stomped on by years of captivity? Probably not, but at this moment, Petra had forced it down and let her strength come to the fore.
I smiled and nodded at that. “You ready to do this?” I asked.
“Stand back and see,” Petra growled as she closed her eyes, and as she did so, the gold-and-silver spiral beneath my fingers surged with light along with Libritas in her sheath. The brands pulsed in harmony, and I thought it wise to do as the dryad asked.
I stepped back not a moment too soon as the dryad spread her arms wide, splaying out her fingers as the vines wound around her wrists danced. The grass around her feet rose up and twisted around her, winding up her legs and her body. As Petra became engulfed by the vegetation, the earth beneath our feet shuddered and churned. Hidden stones cracked as the gold-and-silver light of the rune in the dryad’s chest spilled through it all, and then a moment later, a bronzewood tree erupted from the rumbling dirt and rock.
This wasn’t a mere sapling like Petra summoned before, but a fully-grown tree, a good twenty feet tall with broad, thick branches. The lower ones were bare and twisted almost like arms, while the exposed roots of the tree twisted together into ropy tendrils. Those tendrils grew and grasped, finding purchase in the torn-apart earth to uproot itself fully.
Sir Thorpe let out a low whistle. “Marvelous! Beyond my wildest expectations!”
But that wasn’t what I was focused on, no matter how amazing the mighty tree before us was. My eyes were on the twisting whirlwind of plant life that still raged around Petra. With a final pulse of golden light, the air still for a fraction of a moment before a sudden crack echoed through the air as the vegetation snapped taut around the dryad’s form. As she took a confident step forward under the canopy of her tree, the greenery around her wove together and settled into what I could only describe as plant armor. The leaves and vines conformed to her curvy form, while wood and roots add real protection to her vital spots. Through it all cut the light of her rune, still prominent in the center of her chest.
As that light settled into a soft glow, Petra’s eyes widened as she looked first up at the tree, then down at herself in awe. “I… I really did it! Just like Mother did…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at her hands, her face hardening as she lost herself in the past for a moment. She clenched her hands into fists and looked up at me, steel in those shining emerald eyes. “Thank you, William.”
I smiled as I took a tentative step toward the walking tree. “You can thank me after we save that village.”
Petra nodded at that and stretched an arm out toward the animated tree. With the creaking of wood and screech of bending metal, the towering bronzewood swept all three of us up in its branches and surged toward Kaulda. Its tentacle-like roots reached and pulled, carrying it forward with surprising speed, and it only moved faster and faster as more roots grew. Even the grass of the plains seemed to push and pull us along, and the Sola crystals acted as sparkling witnesses as we flew by, making remarkable time over the hills and vales.
“I must say,” Reggie cheered from his perch among the branches, “this may just be my favorite way to travel yet!”
Petra smiled proudly at his praise, but I had my eye on Kaulda ahead as I drew Lib from her sheath. I had a bad feeling about what was ahead, and it wasn’t just because of the danger that was obviously ahead. It was just too coincidental that the nearest village to where Libritas was imprisoned just happen to fall to trouble so soon after our arrival. That bad feeling was confirmed as we crested a hill a few minutes later, and I got my first clear view of the village, a view that made us all sta
re in horror.
Under more pleasant circumstances, Kaulda would have been a beautiful place. It occupied a quaint valley in the rolling plains, definitely a farming town with fields of some blue-green grain like the otherworldly cousin of corn and wheat beyond it to the north. As for the village itself, there were no more than twenty structures. The assortment of one and two-story buildings was similar in architecture to those of medieval Europe, but with ornamentation that had a distinctly Far Eastern vibe. However, the exotic colors of the wood and thatching told me that the materials were certainly culled from the nearby Treison woods.
Now, though, much of the right side of Kaulda was engulfed in flames. The strange wood gave the fire’s glow a sickly rainbow of colors, and the stench of the smoke assaulted my nose. Men and women both human and notably inhuman fled screaming towards the safer side of the village, and a good two dozen bodies were scattered among the wide streets, blood of various hues staining the trodden grass. Their attackers were short, spindly-limbed humanoids with shiny, dark skin and four arms. There was a baker’s dozen of them at least, and their armor and weapons disparate. Judging by how chaotic their attack was, I couldn’t tell if they had a leader among them. Their purpose was even vaguer, as the raiders only seemed to be attacking the villagers unfortunate enough to be caught in their path as the buildings burned.
“Mindless barbarism!” Reggie growled as he drew his revolver. Petra said nothing, though the way the tree under us quivered in time with her, I could tell her rage was only barely constrained.
“Let’s go get ‘em,” I said with a grim nod.
As the tree surged forward down the hill toward Kaulda, Libritas whispered in my mind. “There. On the far hill.” I looked up to where she nudged my gaze. “One of my brothers is there.”
I had to squint to see what she referred to as the figures atop the far hill were already leaving the scene of the crime. Still, I could make out one of those multi-limbed creatures shrouded in black robes like Uruk’s, attended to by a definitely female figure. From the glint of metal, she was definitely armored, but I could make out both two sharply angled horns sprouting from her head and a scaly tail lashing behind her. Most telling though was a curling wisp of flame that drifted off of her as they walked over the crest of the hill.
“We’ll deal with them later,” I sent back to Libritas. “For now, we have lives to save.” It kind of amazed me how easily that thought came to me. It was almost like second nature for me to want to jump into danger and defend innocent people.
“Some heroes are born, not bred,” was the Brand’s reply to that last thought, and after that, I didn’t have time to think about it as Petra’s tree servant rushed around the perimeter of the village and into the largest cluster of astonished raiders.
Apparently, Reggie and I weren’t the only ones to be surprised by a giant moving tree. The three bandits on the fringes of the village that had been stoking the fires of the largest building in town, a granary by my best guess, turned in collective shock at the rumble of the tree’s root-tentacles on the earth. Now that we were closer, I could see that their shiny skin wasn’t skin at all. It was a hard carapace, and the shining eyes in their heads were compound bug eyes, their mouths clicking mandibles.
“Bugs,” Reggie sniffed. “It had to be bugs!” The intrepid explorer loved many things, but if there was one thing he hated, it was insects… but there was no time to shoot him a reply as we crashed into them.
The bug-men didn’t stand a chance. Petra let out a roar of fury as the roots of her tree flooded over them. The bronzewood trunk, as stout as any steel, slammed into one, shattering its carapace and spraying green ichor everywhere while two of its branches lashed out to beat down the others. With an eye deeper into the village where I still heard cries of anguish, I leapt down from my perch.
“Petra, you keep clearing them out as deep as your tree can go,” I shouted as I hit the ground running. “Reg, see if you can do something about the fires!”
The sickening sound of tearing shell and flesh ripped through the air as Petra directed her tree to rip one of the bandits in half. Her flashing eyes swung to me, and she nodded. “I will not let any of them escape, my savior!”
“And I’ll figure something, my boy,” Reggie added. “Do what you can for the villagers!”
I gave my friends a quick nod before focusing on the source of those screams. I left the granary in the dust behind me and beat feet toward the center of Kaulda. The smoke was cloying, a barrage of irritating and exotic scents as the dozen types of alien woods all burned around me, and it certainly didn’t do my watering eyes any favors in finding either bandit or innocent.
“So, what are these things, Lib?” I sent as I rushed past a cottage that was already collapsed into smoking ash.
“Ettercaps,” she came back immediately. “Spider creatures. Their bite is venomous, but their true danger is their sophisticated trap-making. Why they would leave their caves to assault this village, well, I can only blame the Runes.”
As I grunted my assent, I barreled through a cloud of smoke and ash, into a pocket of clean air, and exactly where I wanted to be: the source of the cries. A pair of the ettercaps, each with a pair of what I recognized to be catch poles, had cornered what looked to be two young girls. One, a young cat-eared girl dressed in a mud-stained dress, shielded her larger friend, an orc-girl if I was guessing right, as they huddled against a side of what had to be a stable. The kitten-girl’s hair was the color of cinnamon that matched the fur on her ears and tail, while the orc-girl’s ruddy skin didn’t quite match her raven-black hair. Speaking of that cat tail, it lashed in fear as the girl’s large, golden eyes trembled, focused on the two unconscious villagers, one human and the other with long, sharply pointed ears, the ettercaps had noosed in their poles.
The sight of those captives told me more than I wanted as to what at least one of the raiders’ goals was, and Libritas and I growled low in unison.
“Come quietly, you two,” the one on the right said, his voice a rasping whisper. “Better not to be hurt, yes?”
The left one took a threatening step forward. “We may not have found what we came for, but we will take what we can, so it’s best to comply and save your life.”
As I took a few stealthy steps towards the bandits, the girls flattened against the wall, eyes desperately searching for salvation. They landed right on me, and I could see the urge to cry out for help… but I managed to get a finger to my lips before either of them could.
The kitten-girl had guts in spades, it seemed because she both held in her scream and nudged her friend to do the same, even as her eyes watered in terror. Fortunately for her, the source of their fear was about to go away. The ettercaps didn’t pay any mind of where the kitten-girl was staring, content that she seemed to be completely frozen and thus easy prey. Lib’s runic tip glowed dangerously as I measured a strike on the first raider’s backside.
The girl finally let out that scream when I rammed Libritas dead on into the center of the ettercap’s back. The spider-man’s own roar of pain mingled with her scream as the super-heated brand melted right through his carapace and down into the flesh below. More of that green ichor spurted out of the wound as I followed all the way through, the Brand of Freedom bursting right through from the bug’s torso and out through his chest.
All six limbs flailed madly as the ettercap died, but his friend’s reflexes were amazing. Before I could even tear Lib free from the dead one, the bandit had dropped his one ‘filled’ catch pole in his bottom pair of arms as he lashed out with the other. He was clearly well trained with his slaver’s weapon, and he brought it up and towards my head and neck with startling speed.
I threw up my free hand to try to catch the pole, and I managed to get hold of it after the rope loop slipped around my head but thankfully before it got around my neck. Still, the bandit had the presence of mind to take what advantage he could, twisting and pulling on the pole’s mechanism to tighten the
loop right under my nose.
The rough hemp burned as it dug into my skin and tore at my nose, but I gritted my teeth and kept a grip on Libritas as the spider-man yanked me towards him. Though he was maybe five feet tall tops with thin limbs, the bandit now had four arms and a lot of leverage to control my movements by the head. I stumbled as the asshole twisted my head this way and that, doing his best to make it hard to both see him and bring my brand around to end him. Raspy chuckles came from his mandibles as he made the critical mistake of thinking he had me in his power.
As I spun Lib in my hand to bring her lethal head back around on my new foe, the ettercap yanked up once again before I could aim a thrust… but then I caught the pitter-patter of little feet, a very feline hiss, and then the crunch of carapace. The bandit let out a chittering yowl as his grip slackened on the pole, and I twisted my eyes back around to catch sight of the cause of his distress.
The kitten-girl was firmly latched onto his shin, her arms and legs wrapped around the limb as her tiny fangs were sunk in as deep as they could. Though her furious biting clearly wasn’t causing any real damage, the shock and pain had been just enough to make the ettercap let go of his pole with two of his arms to try to dislodge the brave villager.
Before the bastard could touch one hair on her head, I pulled the catch pole forward with my free hand hard. Now only did I pull the pole out of his hands, I yanked him forward as well. As he stumbled toward me, I thrust Libritas right into his gut.
There was a horrible, squelching hiss as her power melted right through his shell. With another hard push, the brand burned through, deeper, and then the resistance ended as she erupted through the back of the monster. More green blood poured out of the wound as the ettercap fell against me, and the gore washed over my weapon arm.
