by Randi Darren
“I… goodness. Alright. I’ll have it taken care of. Is it… is it that bad?” Meliae asked, worming into Vince’s arms and looking up at him.
“I might be understating it. I get the impression we suffered a good number of casualties with little to nothing to show for it,” Vince murmured.
Holding tightly to Meliae, Vince didn’t know what to say or do.
He was a long way from being a Ranger now. It felt like everything was falling apart, and it was all his fault.
“I’m sure Petra can handle it. We just need to help her however we can, Sweetling,” Meliae said, nodding her head once. “Though the news from the east is much better.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“They’ve not only held their own but started to turn the enemy forces back entirely. Losses are light, nothing that can’t be absorbed,” Meliae said. “Gerard estimates that if it continues in this way, they’ll be able to either rout the enemy fully or destroy them in a few months.”
Vince smiled bitterly at that.
“That is indeed good news, but I’m not even sure we’ll last that long.”
“Why? I don’t—”
“They were using ancient war tech. Artillery. Weapons similar to catapults but able to fire very long distances. They could turn Yosemite into a smoking crater without ever getting near, and only attack once they were sure we couldn’t resist.”
Meliae sucked in a slow breath and then sighed.
“Meliae,” Vince said, getting her attention. “If I wanted to pack up our grove—our family, our children—and flee, could we?”
Meliae’s face turned pensive and upset.
“Yes… we could, but… my mother could not…” Meliae said slowly. “And obviously we couldn’t take many people with us. We couldn’t sustain much more than the Dryads and our family. The Elf sisters may not… may not come with us at that point. Their family is simply too large now.”
Vince blew out a breath and closed his eyes.
There really wasn’t much that could be done one way or the other. Everything was coming down to fighting it out and either winning or losing.
“The Dragons never came back… but… neither did Ramona,” Meliae said. “I’m sorry. It’s very possible she’s still alive out there, just unable to return.”
Vince could hear the disbelief in Meliae’s words. Most everyone was operating under the idea that Ramona had probably perished in her fight with the Dragon.
They were holding to hope as desperately as possible, but with each day it was harder to keep.
“Oh no, is that the army?” Meliae asked, peering past Vince’s shoulder.
Turning his head, Vince looked to a distant group of people hurrying toward Yosemite.
“I don’t know. They’re flying the banner of Yosemite, but they don’t… look like Petra’s people,” Vince said.
“It’s Berenga’s?” Meliae asked aloud.
“Berenga?” Vince repeated.
Releasing the Dryad, he stepped to the side, staring out across the field.
Moving rapidly, the soldiers were leading, pushing, and hauling a wagon. Everyone seemed desperate to get it to Yosemite, as if they were being chased by the hounds of hell.
“No…” Meliae whispered.
“Meliae? What’s wrong?” Vince asked her as she moved away from him.
The Dryad turned and waddled back into Yosemite, calling out for Mouth. She ignored him completely, focused on whatever she was doing.
“Meliae!?” Vince called after her again.
Focusing back on the wagon that was being moved at an incredible speed, given that it was being pushed and pulled by hand, Vince felt an unknown sense of worry and fear.
Something panicked her. Something upset and panicked her greatly.
What could it be? What am I missing?
Dryads began pouring out of the gate beside him, lining up along the road. It was every single Dryad in his grove, now that he looked.
“Vince,” Mouth said, coming to stand beside him. She caught his hand in hers and squeezed it tightly. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it together with everyone. We can make it work. Ok?”
Now Vince felt like something had truly gone wrong.
“What is it?” he asked, his mouth going dry.
“We don’t know yet… Green is with them, but… the message she sent was very… garbled and not good,” Mouth said, her lips pressing into a firm line after she stopped talking.
“Green? But she was with—” Vince’s head whipped back around to the wagon and he started walking towards it.
In short order, he began to jog and then run.
Please be ok. Please let them be ok.
Vince felt his heart hammer in his chest as his fear ran away with him.
Green had been on deployment with Blue, Daphne, Karya, and Berenga. They’d been working on the western end of the lines and keeping the enemy from flanking.
Vince was getting close now. He could see there were people in the wagon. People with blood-stained bandages. Clearly the wounded.
Passing by a soldier, Vince didn’t stop.
“Lord—” a second guard said, trying to get his sovereign’s attention as he raced by.
Two guards moved out of the way as Vince came to a sliding halt next to the racing wagon. Climbing up the rear board, he peered in to see what was going on and why they were moving so fast.
Karya’s glassy-eyed stare was the first thing he saw. She’d been literally split in half at the waist, her entrails spread out on the floor of the wagon. Her lower half was fetched up next to her.
Laid out beside her was Daphne, with a hole in her chest that looked as if something had smashed through the front of her body. Her chest was simply gone, and he could see her spine.
Both were dead and gone.
Green was being held by Blue, and they were seated against the side board.
Green was missing her legs, and her face looked as if it’d been doused in acid. Her eyes were simply gone, as was her nose. She was shivering uncontrollably against Blue.
He only knew it was her because her Dryad Elven figure was unmistakable.
“Grove-husband,” Blue croaked out. Her shoulders and upper chest looked burned, and her armor looked like it had been burned onto her very skin.
But she didn’t look like her life was in danger.
Green’s head swung one way and then the other, as if seeking him out.
“Husband?” she asked. It sounded odd, and her lips didn’t quite move.
“I’m here, Green,” Vince said, scooting around the side of the wagon to get to her.
“It’s so good to hear your voice, love.
“You need to… listen to… listen to the grove-mistress. Dig out our seeds and plant us. Ok? You have to… you have… to—” Green’s head bobbed slowly. Her shivering stopped, and she slumped to one side, unmoving, against Blue.
Sobbing quietly, Blue laid her cheek to Green’s head, holding on to the other Dryad.
Vince swallowed past the lump in his throat. Looking around in the wagon, he finally saw what he was looking for.
Fes was in the wagon, her back pressed into the corner.
Her face was contorted in pain and she looked very pale for her race, all things considered.
Vince gently touched Blue on the shoulder and kissed her cheek before scooting around to Berenga’s side.
One dark-black eye slid open at his approach, and Vince felt his heart unclench.
She was alive.
Coming up along next to her, Vince wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her.
“Fes, it’s so good to see you. What happened? Daphne, Karya, and Green… they’re all dead. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Berenga said. Her voice sounded incredibly hollow to him. “The world just… exploded… around us. Then the Tri-lliance soldiers were everywhere.”
A soldier had gotten closer to Vince and leaned over as they raced along to Yosemi
te.
“We think they somehow set up a magical bomb next to the command tent. It was the only location that was hit,” said the soldier. “Full of acid, fire, and a lot of metal. It was big. Real big.”
Vince nodded a bit, laying his forehead to Fes’s cheek.
“I’m afraid… I won’t be your Fes anymore, though,” Berenga said, her eyes closing.
“What? I don’t understand.”
Berenga’s right arm moved, and she held it up.
Or what was left of it. There was nothing below the elbow except charred and shattered flesh.
Then he looked down, only to find her left leg missing below the knee.
“I’m a broken warrior. Fit only to mother and breed now. I must relinquish my title of Fes.
“I’m so sorry, husband. I’ve failed you and gotten some of our wives killed,” Berenga said in a hiccupping voice. “Daph and Karrie didn’t even have a chance. They just… were there, and then they weren’t.”
Then she began to sob uncontrollably.
Chapter 12
Vince stared down at the three open graves. They were in the grove out behind his house. Right in the middle of where new Dryads too young to join his grove planted their trees. That included the trees of his daughters, who were just barely beginning to understand themselves.
Daphne, Karya, and Green had all been placed in them. He’d dug the graves personally and laid them to rest.
Meliae had convinced him to bury them naked—naked and uncovered. Without coffins or shrouds.
Sighing, Vince crouched down in front of Karya’s resting place.
The lively and willful young woman who’d never given him peace was gone.
In her place was a corpse that looked like it had died in pain. Pain and confusion.
Feeling his emotions threatening to overrun him, he turned his face away from the dead woman. A woman he’d ended up caring for deeply. Who’d told him the things he hadn’t wanted to hear when everyone else had spared him his feelings.
Her wife Daphne lay in the grave next to her. They’d set out together to start a grove and love one another, and had ended up in Vince’s.
Daphne had been the most martial of them, quick to fight and smile. Where Karya had been flighty, Daphne had been a stalwart rock.
Then there was Green in the far grave, one Vince didn’t want to look into.
She’d held on to life long enough to hear him, relay a message, and then pass on in Blue’s arms.
The quiet and timid Green who’d enjoyed hiding in his room to ambush him without being caught by the other wives. And yet who’d loved being caught even more.
“Sweetling, I promise, this is the best thing for them. It’s very, very likely they’ll come back to you,” Meliae said, squeezing his shoulder. “We Dryads are hearty creatures, especially when we have such a strong grove to pull upon.”
“Even though their seed was in me? And not in the earth?” Vince asked, his voice subdued.
“Especially since it was in you,” Mouth interjected, leaning over and hugging his and Meliae’s hands tightly to herself. “Let the grove-mistress call the seeds forth from you and then cover them in the earth with their bodies.”
Vince gave a sharp nod and lifted his hunting knife from his belt. With a practiced slash, he opened the same spot on his body the Dryads used to put their seeds into him.
As was always the case, little to no blood flowed from the gash at all.
Meliae reached around Mouth with her other hand and pressed it to the open wound.
A shifting sensation ran throughout Vince’s body. As quickly as it had come, though, it was over, and he now felt a strange sense of loss.
As if something were missing.
“Ah, they’re very well nurtured. Shriveled, but brimming with power,” Meliae said.
Pulling her hand from his wound, she opened her palm.
Sitting in the middle of her hand were three bloody lumps.
“Those are…” Vince paused; he couldn’t quite ask it.
“These are their seeds,” Mouth said, pulling on Vince’s hand and putting it under Meliae’s. “Take them and plant them into their flesh. Preferably their chests.”
Meliae dropped the seeds into his hand, then ran her hand along the wound in his chest, sealing it without a single blemish.
Both Dryads released Vince and took a step back.
Fighting back another rush of emotions, Vince didn’t dare look into Karya’s grave.
Only then did he realize the Dryads of his grove had circled around him. They were all holding Dryad children as well.
No small number of them were already five years old. All stared at him. He didn’t doubt for a minute they quite understood what was going on, and part of him wanted to tell them to leave.
“They must learn of this part of life early,” Mouth said, her voice soft. “It is better this way, that death is honored instead of feared. We’ll have to send them away at some point to make their own groves.”
Clutching the seeds tightly, Vince turned to Karya’s grave. Careful to not land on her, he slid down into it.
“How will I know which one is hers?” Vince asked, trying not to look at her.
“Touch them. They are their seeds, of course. They know you as you know them,” Meliae said.
Vince thought that sounded rather cryptic, but he placed a finger on a seed.
And instantly knew it was Green. The seed quivered at his touch and seemed as if it wanted to hide and yet remain seen at the same time.
Smiling sadly, Vince moved his finger to the next seed.
It was Daphne. It met him immediately, demanding to know what was wrong and if she could help.
Finally, Vince touched the last seed.
Warm, bubbling mirth came up from nowhere. Teasing laughter and a playful wink that promised mischief.
Karya.
Taking the seed in hand, Vince squatted down over her body.
Bracing himself for the task, he reached into her chest from below and pushed her seed deep into the decomposing body.
Standing up quickly, Vince practically leapt out of the grave.
As quickly as he could, he moved into Daphne’s grave and then Green’s, repeating the process. Putting their seeds deep into their dead bodies.
Shuddering from head to toe, Vince stood with his back to the graves. His head hung low.
“You said they’ll come back. How sure are you of that?” Vince asked.
“I…” Meliae paused, then sighed deeply. “I want to believe it. It can happen in this way. Not often, but… it has happened before. The seed literally sprouts into the body and revives it. The problem is the time it takes.”
“The time?” Vince asked.
“For those it… it worked on, it took years. But it varies for each Dryad. For some, it’s only a year—others, a decade.
“Mother said there was one Dryad she knew who claimed she’d been reborn in such a way, but it took a hundred years.”
Vince nodded a little.
Even if it takes two hundred, I’d like to believe that maybe they’ll live in the future.
“We’ll cover them with earth,” Mouth said, touching his forearm gently. “Go clean up, and care for Berenga. We’re not sure how long she’ll…”
Feeling his teeth snap shut, Vince choked down the words that wanted to be shouted.
Fes was dying, and the Dryads couldn’t stop it. Something lived in her.
In her very blood itself. Something vile and magic-borne. Leila had looked at it and had been unable to deduce what it was.
No matter how much magic they used—Dryad, Elven, or otherwise—it just soaked it up and became stronger. Like a living poison.
Taking a deep breath, Vince left the grove and headed for the back door to his home.
Ramona is missing, and it’s looking like she won’t be coming back.
Petra hasn’t reported in, and I’m starting to get worried.
Daphne,
Karya, and Green are dead.
Blue is wounded.
And Fes is… Fes is dying, and I can’t do a thing.
A Fairy fluttered near the door to his home, waiting for him.
“I… I have a report,” the Fairy said, clearly unsure how to proceed.
“Let me have it then,” Vince said, expecting worse news to come. Everything else was going wrong, after all.
“The southern army has begun digging trench-works. Their safety is much greater now,” said the Fairy.
“Ah, good,” Vince said, feeling his heart unclench just a bit. It was good news for once. “Petra got them situated then?”
“The general… the general is missing,” said the Fairy. “She was last seen carrying wounded from the front. Thera has taken command for the time being.”
Vince pressed a hand to his eyes, not responding. He opened the door to his house and went inside.
Falling over something right inside the doorway, Vince crashed down to one knee.
Growling, he turned to smash whatever had tripped him.
Sitting there was the extremely well-made backpack the Beastkin named Andrea had given him.
“Damnit Red, I told you to put it somewhere safe, not in the—”
Vince stopped mid-sentence.
New allies. New allies with old-world technology? New allies with technology!
Vince snatched the backpack up and ran off to a room he’d set aside for his trophies.
He moved quickly, pulling the metal disc from the bag as he went.
“What is that?” asked the Fairy. Apparently it’d followed him.
“Hopefully an answer. Tell everyone I’m going into this to find allies. No one is to follow me, but they can wait here if they want,” Vince said.
Setting the disc down, Vince pressed the button and stood up.
A glowing blue oval popped into existence, and a room that looked like a study appeared on the other side of the portal.
After looking around his trophy room, Vince snatched up an older saber he’d used before the one he’d broken in the dragon.
Belting it to his waist, he stepped through the portal.
He was alone.
He moved to the only door in the room, flung it open and then moved into the next room.
