by DB King
“Everything’s fine!” Sylvia announced cheerfully. “They’re still alive, and all their body parts are intact! I know this because I reattached a few of them myself!”
Raphael winced. The elf had, indeed, reattached Fenix’s nose after an ice wolf had ripped it from his face. The battlemage had lost several fingers, too, but thanks to Sylvia’s Healing magic, they were back on his hand, though sore and puffy.
“Hey, Raphael,” Fenix said.
“Yes?”
“Well done back there. You’re a fantastic armsman,” the battlemage murmured through split lips. “We managed to bring down eight cycles of the elf’s conjurations.”
“Really? I couldn’t keep the wolves from getting to you!” he protested. “And you got so badly hurt!”
“I’ll be fine after a bit of rest. We fought together for the first time today.” Fenix coughed. “It was good.”
Raphael smiled. “Yeah, it was.”
He wanted to discuss some of the finer points of their tactics and what they might do differently in the future, but when Raphael looked back at the battlemage, Fenix was unconscious. Sylvia picked him up and slung him over her shoulder.
“I’ll toss this sorry heap into his bed and use more Healing Magic on him,” she said. “But he’ll need to take the next day off, so I guess this is it for team training until we make landfall.”
“I couldn’t protect him, Sylvia. Not against all those enemies. The wolves weren’t able to hurt me that badly thanks to my armor, but Fenix… and there were so many of them coming from every direction that I—”
“That’s what happens when an armsman can’t defend the mage in his or her war party,” the elf said. “Though to be fair, you two were up against overwhelming odds. If you had a secondary line of defense, or at least some way to distract the wolves or slow them down, you… probably would still have ended up getting mauled, but you would have fared much better.”
“What about me?” Eliza piped up. “I can be that secondary line of defense!”
“Your sword wouldn’t even scratch an ice wolf, Eliza,” Sylvia said, adopting an uncharacteristically gentle tone. “And then I would have to heal you alongside Fenix.”
“I don’t have to scratch anything.” Eliza’s eyes blazed with resolve. “Like you said, I only have to distract our enemies or slow them down. Then Raphael or Fenix can strike killing blows.”
“Anything’s worth a try, but given the shape this dolt is in…” Sylvia smacked Fenix’s bottom, drawing a pained grunt from the battlemage. “We’ll have to figure that out later. Leave the fighting to Raphael, Fenix, and me for this assignment. Until we get back to the Guild House, your most important task at all times is keeping yourself safe.”
Eliza nodded, but Raphael could see the disappointment in her face. He nudged her as Sylvia walked away with Fenix.
“Hey Eliza? Could you tell me more about sanguine treants? About their weaknesses, where they’re most likely to appear, things like that?” he asked. “If you know anything about Death Druids and how to fight them, I’d like to hear it, too. Let’s go grab some food and then talk.”
She smiled. “I know you’re just trying to make me feel better, Raphael, and I appreciate it. I really do. But Sylvia’s right. As it stands now, I can’t really help in a fight, but I’ll do my best with everything else!”
Raphael nodded. “We’re all counting on you, Eliza.”
“I wouldn’t ask for anything less,” she said.
* * *
After a week at sea, The Sparrow’s Light pulled into the waters beyond Vitoria. The merchant ship was far too large to dock at the town’s pier, so a small boat was dispatched to ferry Sylvia’s war party to shore.
As they waited for the boat to reach the Sparrow’s Light, Sylvia pulled out a handful of white, coin-like objects. She gave one to each of them, muttering an incantation as she did so.
“Recall charms,” the elf explained. “If your life is truly in danger, snap your charm in half. Its enchantment will transport you instantly back to the Guild House. Each recall charm is specifically tuned to you, though, so no one else can use it. But be careful. Someone can break it on your behalf, and how embarrassing would that be, showing up in the Guild House without any pants and your toes covered in strawberry jam?”
That was an oddly specific example, Raphael observed. “It seems very helpful. When we first met, you used this to send Fenix away, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Creating and activating a recall charm takes up a lot of Spell Dust, and it also requires other tertiary reagents as well, such as a dash of crushed diamond and a pinch of powdered sapphires. All of this has to be paid for, which is why it’s going to take Fenix, the dull, clumsy idiot that he is, a while to pay the Guild a hundred gold coins back.” Sylvia chuckled.
“I’m right here, you know?” Fenix grumbled.
“So what you’re saying is that if I use the recall charm, I’ll owe the Guild a hundred gold coins?” Eliza gasped, holding the white disc in her hand as if it were some kind of horrific venomous arachnid.
“Yes. And now that I’ve tuned it to you, you’re responsible for it.” Sylvia beamed. “So don’t even think about throwing it away.”
Eliza nodded and put the charm away in her belt pouch, her face pale with horror.
Raphael tucked it away somewhere in his pockets. Sylvia meant well, but if it used up Spell Dust, he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He resolved not to use his recall charm, no matter what happened.
The ferry arrived, then, so with the gentle morning breeze in their hair, Sylvia’s war party said their goodbyes and thanks to the sailors and the captain and disembarked, climbing down a rope ladder to reach the smaller boat.
A somber middle-aged woman wearing trousers and a sleeveless tunic of rough, homespun cotton steered their ferry while another similarly clad man, younger but not by much, worked the oars. They gave the war party little more than polite nods of acknowledgement before setting about their task.
As they stepped onto the town’s pier a few minutes later, a short and portly man wearing a red skull cap and a vest—the official vestments of a Lucarian town mayor—approached. He was trailed by several men, all clad in official-looking vests with name tags, who could only be his assistants. Beneath their vests, all of them wore rough work clothes that were similar in cut and make to the ferrywoman’s.
“Greetings, you must be the honored Hell Drakes.” The man bowed, sweeping off his cap. He was bald beneath it, and his broad features were tanned and rough from a lifetime spent working under the sun. “I am Enzo Bernardi, mayor of Vitoria. I thank you for coming to our aid.”
“Hey, short man. The Guild Master thinks your gold is good enough, so here we are.” Sylvia stuck out her hand. “I’m Sylvia. These are my minions. Great. Now give us some foo—ow!”
“Guild protocol requires us to provide proper introductions and have the client sign this receipt!” Eliza hissed, pulling the elf away by the ear. She smiled, turned to Enzo, and handed him a piece of paper. “Apologies, Mr. Bernardi. You’ve already met Sylvia Shadowsoul. I am Eliza Wildwynd. This is Fenix Hellstorm and this is… Raphael?” Eliza turned to Raphael. “Just Raphael?”
Raphael shrugged. “I guess…” I should pick one, he thought. Raphael… Dragon? He shook his head. A good name would come to him eventually. “Just Raphael,” he finally said.
Eliza nodded and continued. “Please review this receipt from the Hell Drakes, and when you are ready, please sign here and here.”
“Ah, of course. I’ll gladly do so,” Enzo said. He nodded to one of his assistants, who produced a capped pen from his vest. The mayor signed the receipt. It glowed red briefly as the tip of the mayor’s pen left the surface of the paper, reminding Raphael of when he’d signed his admission form in front of the Guild Master.
As Eliza rolled up the receipt and tucked it away into her belt pouch, the mayor bowed once more. “Please, come this way, honored Hell Drakes
. We have much to discuss, and I have prepared refreshments for us to partake while we do so. Captain Wildwynd, I am so grateful for your presence, for our town is in great peril.”
“What? Captain? Wait a minute! She’s not! I mean! I’m the—” Sylvia began, but Eliza and the mayor were already walking away, deep in conversation.
Fenix picked up Sylvia’s knapsack from where it had been left on the pier and thrust into her arms. The battlemage still looked a little battered and bruised, but the worst of his injuries were behind him. He’d even replaced his mangled left gauntlet.
“Come on, minion. Get moving, or the Captain’s going to leave us behind,” he said, shaking his head and making tutting noises of mock disapproval.
“Do you want a beating, Fenix?” Sylvia shouldered her knapsack and cracked her knuckles. “Actually, it doesn’t matter, because I’m giving you one whether you want it or not.”
Hefting his glaive over his shoulders, Raphael smiled and followed them. The adventure was now truly underway.
Chapter 17
Sylvia wasn’t keen on tarrying overlong in town, whether or not refreshments were offered. After swiftly making it clear to the mayor just who the ranking Hell Drakes Captain was, she picked him up by the collar and lifted him a foot above the ground, bringing his eyes level with hers.
“Alright, short man. Let’s get the ball rolling,” she demanded. “Your request describes carnivorous, walking trees. Is that right?”
Mr. Bernardi nodded, his sweaty face pale with horror. “Yes. We’ve lost at least a dozen. First, a lumber party went missing. And then our local ranger led a search party to find them. They didn’t return, either. We heard screams from the woods, along with all sorts of horrible sounds. After that, we closed the town gates and posted watchmen. For the last two weeks, they’ve seen walking trees, just within the edge of torchlight. Some say they have maws and clawed limbs covered in dried blood.”
“Torchlight?” Raphael asked, feeling Rayne snuggle cozily in his pocket. The faerie dragon had zipped into hiding when they boarded the ferry and hadn’t emerged since. “Not sunlight. You mean no one has spotted them during the day?”
“No. We’ve had no sightings in the daytime,” the mayor said.
“Definitely sanguine treants, then. Undead things don’t like sunlight,” Sylvia said. “They can take the hearts of those they’ve eaten, pop them into a dead tree, and hey, there’s another one of them. Your missing townsfolk are dead. No, worse than dead.”
“Hey, Captain,” Fenix said, thumbing over his shoulder. “We’ve got an audience, so discretion is advised.”
Raphael let his gaze follow Fenix’s gesture. The people of Vitoria had gathered, forming a curious, aghast circle around the war party. And with good reason, too. After all, Sylvia was manhandling their mayor in the middle of their town square, where there was a small fountain decorated with stone carvings of birds.
To any uninformed onlooker, it would seem that the elf was about to dunk the mayor into the fountain. To Raphael, and surely to Fenix and Eliza, it was pretty obvious that the elf was indeed about to dunk the mayor into the fountain.
“Let’s keep walking and talking, shall we?” Raphael said, pulling Sylvia’s arms down so that Mr. Bernardi could stand on his own two feet once more. Looking around, he spotted more than a few downcast faces and several women who broke down into tears. Sylvia’s bleak assessment of the likelihood there were any survivors to rescue hadn’t been well received.
“A river runs through the woods and comes all the way into the middle of town, where we’ve built our lumber mill, before heading out into the sea,” the mayor continued as they resumed their journey to the town gates. “That’s how we do our logging. We enter the woods on foot and then send our lumber downstream to be worked on.”
“That must be the mill, then,” Eliza said, pointing ahead at a large, wooden structure built across a deep groove in caked, semi-dried mud. “But I see no river.”
“That’s the other concerning thing. The river dried up a few days ago. At first, it slowed down. Then it became a stream, then a trickle. And now it’s like this.” The mayor sighed. “Fortunately, we have several wells dug throughout the town, and we’ve never fully relied on this river for water in the first place.”
“Rivers don’t just dry up,” Fenix pointed out. “And there hasn’t been any sign of drought in this region.”
Raphael hopped into the dry river bed as they reached the mill. He reached down to the ground: black, silty soil, still damp. That could only mean one thing.
“The river didn’t go dry. It’s been blocked further upstream,” he said. “Someone must have built a dam.”
“So we are dealing with a Death Druid, then. Sanguine treants only know how to kill, eat, and make more of themselves.” Sylvia nudged the mayor with her elbow. “Didn’t your request also say something about changing terrain within the woods?”
“Yes,” Mr. Bernardi replied, leading them past the mill and toward the town gates. A half dozen men stood there on makeshift ramparts, looking out over a wooden palisade. They all wore coveralls and thick gloves. Each of them held an improvised spear or lumber axe. These had to be the watchmen that the mayor mentioned.
“We mark the trees at the start of our lumber routes with paint,” he continued. “It helps us organize our teams and plan our work cycles. But the trees we’ve marked disappeared, only to be replaced by other unmarked trees of a different species that only grows further in the woods.”
“Maybe that’s why your local ranger never returned,” Eliza said. “It can’t be easy to find a path out of shifting woods.”
“If we just go charging in without a plan, we’ll get lost, too,” Fenix pointed out. He rummaged in his knapsack for a few moments before producing a small crystal disc, roughly the size of his palm. “I was going to use this arcane mapper to keep our bearings in the woods, but it can only show a simulated image of where we’ve been, which won’t be helpful at all if the terrain keeps changing.”
“Perhaps Sylvia can use her sword to fly all of us above the woods and then dive down when we find the Death Druid?” Raphael suggested.
The elf put her arm around his shoulders and grinned. “I’m always happy to give you a ride, Raphael, but there’s just one problem.”
“You forgot to bring your sword with you,” Eliza guessed.
“No, I didn’t!” Sylvia snapped. She reached her hand out and started chanting. A swirling circle of blue light appeared before her palm. The leather-wrapped hilt of her magnificent sword emerged from it. She grasped the hilt and drew her blade the rest of the way out, before brandishing in it the air. “Aha! What do you have to say now?”
“I’d say, ‘What was that problem you mentioned, Sylvia’?” Raphael asked. “The sword can’t fly high enough? It can’t take all our weight?”
“No, and no,” Sylvia answered, pointing at the tree canopy with her sword. “Have you seen how thick that forest is? It’s pretty much impregnable to vision. We can swoop over the woods all we want, but we’ll never find anything from the sky. Also, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to fly through the treeline at all, given how thick these woods are.”
“And that would just make the Death Druid more difficult to find if he wants to hide from us,” Raphael reasoned, racking his brain for a way to navigate the woods. Usually, he would have cooked up an idea or two by now, thanks to the light of the Dragon Meridian…
“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed. “I know how we can make our way through the woods and find this Death Druid.”
“Let’s hear it,” Fenix said eagerly.
“The junkyard shifts and changes all the time, too, but Koshi and I have always been able to find our way home from it using the light of the Dragon Meridian,” Raphael said. “With me around, we’ll never get lost, no matter how the woods change.”
The battlemage looked skeptical. “I’m sorry, Raphael, but that all sounds very vague and uncertain. How do
es the Dragon Meridian’s light help you navigate a shifting landscape? And even if it worked in the junkyard, can we be sure it’ll work here?”
“I’m sure of it. Koshi said the Dragon Meridian’s light keeps our minds unclouded, which means that I will always be able to find my way anywhere,” Raphael insisted. “Trust me, Fenix. I won’t let you down.”
Fenix smiled. “Honestly, I’m still not quite convinced, since your powers are so different from the magic I’ve studied for most of my life. But if you say it’s going to work, then I’ll take your word for it.”
“Me too,” Eliza chimed in. “I believe the light of your Dragon Meridian will show us the way.”
“Good job, Raphael! You came up with the first part of our plan!” Sylvia grabbed him by his shoulders, pulling him in so that his cheek was pressed against the cold surface of her breastplate.
Eliza’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Something told Raphael that now would be a good time to extricate himself from the elf, but she tightened her embrace, stifling his attempt to slip away.
“Can Raphael lead us directly to the Death Druid? Otherwise, we’re going to have to comb the woods for him, and doing something like that in a place that keeps changing is going to be quite impossible,” the elf pointed out.
“At least we can find our way out whenever we want,” Fenix said. “But our Captain is right. It’ll be easy for the Death Druid to avoid us if he wants to.”
“Sanguine treants are undead creatures,” Eliza said. “This means that no matter how much flesh they eat and blood they drink, they don’t heal normally and must be repaired by their creator if they get hurt.” Eliza had her fists on her hips, and it was now clear that she included Raphael in her angry glare. He glanced at Fenix, hoping for some kind of help from the battlemage, but he was either actively ignoring whatever was going on between the two women or completely oblivious to it.
