Chapter 74: Whispers of the Awakened Forest
The Arboreal Siege
Hussein's blade hummed with a cold, crystalline resonance as he flicked its edge—a sound like winter's first frost biting into steel. Bennett shivered as the air around them thickened with a predatory chill, his every hair standing on end. Dadaniel gripped his axe, eyes darting between the skeletal trees.
"Gold-Eye Serpents?" the guide hissed.
"No." Hussein's voice cut through the gathering tension. "These are… many."
The forest awoke.
First came the whispers—a susurrus of rustling leaves that swelled into a deafening roar, as if the earth itself groaned. Snow cascaded from branches like shaken lace. Beneath the cacophony, Bennett discerned an alien cadence: clicks and buzzes interlaced with the creak of ancient timber, a language older than human tongues.
Then—cracks.
Twenty paces ahead, a snow-laden pine tore its roots from the frozen earth. Ice shards rained down as the tree lurched forward, its gnarled roots coiling into grotesque imitations of legs. A dozen more followed, then fifty, then a hundred—a grotesque army of animated timber encircling the gorge entrance.
Bennett's throat tightened. "They're herding us! Fall back—into the gorge!"
"Wait!" Hussein barked, eyes narrowed. "Treants are guardians, not aggressors. Provoke them, and every tree in this damned forest becomes our enemy."
A lead treant bent low, its branch-arm hurling a boulder the size of a wagon. Hussein moved faster than prayer—yanking Bennett by the collar while slamming Dadaniel aside with a sword-pommel strike. The trio scattered as the projectile obliterated their former position, carving a crater deep enough to bury a horse.
"So peaceful, eh?" Bennett spat snow, scrambling behind a rock. "They've got the hospitality of starving wolves!"
Dance of Roots and Ruin
Hussein became a golden comet amidst the arboreal tide. His blade—chipped and rusted yet radiant with saintly aura—sheared through treant limbs like parchment. Where he pivoted, splintered wood rained; where he rolled, roots erupted in geysers of frost and soil. A towering pine collapsed sideways, crushing three others in a domino cascade of splintering trunks.
Yet the forest answered.
Leaves detonated into shrapnel. Thousands of frozen needles razored through the air, forcing Hussein into a defensive crouch. His golden aura flared, deflecting the onslaught until he resembled a gilded hedgehog—every inch of his cloak bristling with embedded foliage.
"Bennett! Flush them!" Dadaniel roared, loosing arrows that sparked harmlessly against bark.
The young mage clenched his teeth. Twin wind blades shredded an incoming ice boulder, while a third spell sent a treant stumbling into its kin. "I'm trying! They're—"
"Down!" Hussein's warning came a heartbeat late.
A whip-like root caught Bennett mid-incantation, slamming him against stone. Blood filled his mouth—coppery and warm—as the world blurred. Through ringing ears, he heard Hussein's battle cry crescendo into something primordial.
The knight's sword erupted.
A corona of golden light vaporized every treant within twenty paces, reducing ancient pines to kindling. The shockwave hurled Bennett backward, his vision swimming with afterimages of that impossible strike—a sun given blade-form.
Hussein stood panting at the blast's epicenter, sweat freezing on his brow. His aura flickered like a guttering candle.
Retreat Through the Shattered Pass
"Gorge's blocked!" Dadaniel hauled Hussein toward the rubble-choked entrance. "We need—"
"Fire!" Bennett croaked, spitting crimson. "Burn their corpses!"
Pyromancy surged from his palms. Ignited sap turned treant remains into roaring pyres, the stench of burning resin overwhelming. The trio retreated behind a granite outcrop as the surviving treants recoiled—not from flames, but the keening wail now rising from the forest's heart.
Dadaniel peered through smoke. "They're… retreating?"
Bennett followed his gaze. The arboreal host shuffled backward, their movements synchronized to the distant hum—a sound that now carried notes of alarm.
Hussein wiped blood from split knuckles. "Not retreating. Regrouping. That hum—it's not their voice. Something else commands them."
The realization struck like icewater. These living trees weren't attackers.
They were heralds.
The True Adversary Revealed
The gorge trembled.
Deep within the stone throat, something answered the forest's cry—a vibration that liquefied snow into black slurry. Bennett's enhanced senses recoiled as the vibration resolved into words, each syllable grinding his bones:
"Intruders… defilers… mine to judge."
Hussein's sword clattered to the ground. For the first time, fear etched lines into the knight's face.
"Saint-tier aura," he whispered. "But… corrupted."
Above the burning treants, the sky curdled. Clouds spiraled into a vortex centered on the gorge, within which twin lights ignited—golden orbs larger than castle gates.
The Gold-Eye Serpent's maw split the glacier wall, fangs dripping venom that sizzled through ice like acid. Its gaze pinned them where they stood, a weight beyond mortal comprehension.
"Kneel," it thundered. "Kneel and be swift in dying."
Chapter 75: The Arboreal Tribunal
The Giant Emerges
The forest held its breath.
The treants retreated in eerie unison, their root-feet crunching snow as they parted like a living tide. Behind them, the earth trembled—a rhythmic quaking that rattled Bennett's teeth. Through gaps in the wooden legion, a shadow loomed.
Dadaniel's axe slipped from numb fingers. "Gods above… look."
It was a colossus.
Towering seven stories high, the ancient treant's bark resembled rusted armor, its trunk split into a grotesque parody of human legs. Branches coiled into knotted arms, one clutching a moss-choked horn the size of a siege engine. Where its face should have been, jagged protrusions formed a crude visage: a bark-lipped mouth, a gnarled nose, and hollows where eyes might have grown.
"You," the behemoth boomed, its voice shaking icicles from nearby pines. "Why slaughter my kin?"
Bennett stepped forward, heart hammering. "They attacked us first! We were just standing here!"
The treant tilted its crown, creaking like a ship in storm. "The pact… broken. Ten-year truce… violated."
"Pact? What pact?" Bennett spread his hands. "We're not your enemies! We've never heard of this 'Evil-Eye Tyrant'!"
Silence.
The forest seemed to lean closer.
Wood's Lament
The giant treant—Wood, as it gruffly introduced itself—lowered its horn. Centuries of resentment spilled forth in halting Common Tongue:
Long ago, when glaciers still gnawed at these mountains, treants ruled the frozen woods. Their kind nurtured the Life Spring, a sacred pool deep within the gorge that birthed true sentience in awakened trees. Then came the Tyrant—a cyclopean abomination that seized the gorge, slaughtered Wood's brethren, and built its fortress from their corpses.
"Bones… my sister's roots… became its throne," Wood groaned, sap dripping like tears.
A decade-long war followed. Wood's endless armies of mindless "Companions" (lesser trees roused by the Nature's Horn) clashed against the Tyrant's undead legions. Stalemate forced a bitter truce: every ten years, treants could send emissaries to mourn at the Life Spring's desecrated banks.
"Today… our day," Wood rumbled. "But you… killed guards. Thought you… its slaves."
Bennett glanced at the shattered treants—their splintered forms now pitiful, not monstrous. "We didn't know! Your 'Companions' attacked without—"
"Compensation!" The horn's blast flattened snowdrifts.
A Bargain Struck in Sap and Steel
Negotiations crawled like glaciers.
Bennett learned three truths:
The Life Spring's waters could awaken true sentience in trees—a process taking centuries.
The Nature's Horn's magic had limits. Most awakened trees remained mindless drones; only rare few evolved into full treants.
Wood was lonely.
"No kin… only Companions," the giant admitted, branches sagging. "Dumb as stones."
Seizing the opening, Bennett gestured to the gorge. "Let us help! We'll sneak past the Tyrant, reclaim the Spring!"
Wood's bark-face twisted skeptically. "Three worms… against it?"
Hussein stepped forward, blade gleaming. "Worms with teeth."
For ten tense minutes, the treant debated in creaks and groans. Finally, it extended a branch thicker than Bennett's torso.
"Swear… free Spring… or become fertilizer."
Bennett gripped the limb. "Deal."
Whispers of the Defiled
At dusk, Wood blew the Horn.
A thousand treants knelt as mournful notes echoed through the gorge. Hidden beneath bark-and-snow cloaks, the trio crept past spectral sentries—withered trees fused with human skeletons, their hollow eyes tracking every shadow.
"Black magic," Dadaniel whispered. "The Tyrant's defiled this place."
Bennett's boots squelched in sludge—not snow, but congealed sap tinged blood-red. Ahead, the gorge narrowed into a throat of ice, where something vast shifted in the gloom.
Hussein froze.
Embedded in the glacier wall, a single golden eye snapped open.
Chapter 76: The Fountain of Ageless Dawn
The Wellspring of Life
The air thickened with reverence as Wood spoke of the sacred pool.
"We call it… the Fountain of Youth," the ancient treant rumbled, his voice trembling like wind through autumn leaves. "Roots of our race… blood of our ancestors…"
Bennett listened, rapt, as the tale unfolded:
In primordial times, when frost still clawed at the world's bones, a lone tree drank from the spring. Its roots drank deep of waters that pulsed with the rhythm of creation itself—and awoke. That first treant, progenitor of Wood's kind, wept sap-tears of loneliness until the gods took pity. Their gift? The Horn of Awakening, whose notes could rouse slumbering trees into rudimentary "Companions."
But awakening was not birth.
"Centuries… to grow a mind," Wood explained, branches sagging. "Most die… as dumb wood… before becoming true kin."
The fountain's waters granted longevity—a single sip could stretch a treant's life for millennia. Yet the spring's flow was fickle, its basin no larger than a child's bath. During dry seasons, treants rationed droplets like kings parting with gold.
"Foolish… we shared," Wood groaned, bark cracking with shame. "Wolves… bears… all drank. But only we… gained years. Others… gained power."
Bennett's pulse quickened. "Power?"
Whispers of Immortality
The revelations came in fits and starts:
Healing Beyond Death: A mortally wounded ice wyrm, moments from its final breath, had once lapped the waters—and risen as a storm-wreathed leviathan.
Evolution Unleashed: Wood's childhood companion, a scraggly snow-wolf, had become a Tempest Alpha after drinking—a creature capable of bending entire packs to its will through primal song.
Human Miracles: Long ago, a human emperor—Aragorn Roland himself, Bennett realized with a shiver—had knelt at the spring's edge. The waters gifted him not years, but clarity: visions that forged an empire.
"He taught me… your tongue," Wood said, fondness softening his creaks. "Called me… friend."
Guilt coiled in Bennett's gut. This gentle giant had laid bare his soul—and for what? To trust three strangers who'd butchered his kin? Yet the mercenary's resolve hardened. If the fountain could resurrect the dying and birth kings… what might it do for a man bold enough to seize it?
A Pact Forged in Shadows
"Great Wood," Bennett began, bowing with courtly flourish. "Let us right today's wrong. We'll slay this Tyrant. Return your spring."
The treant's crown shuddered—a sound like bones breaking. "Three… against the One-Eyed God?"
"Three and you," Dadaniel cut in, hefting his axe. "Your Horn can rouse an army!"
Wood's hollows seemed to stare through them. For ten heartbeats, only the groan of shifting roots filled the gorge. Then:
"Swear… on your blood. Swear… no greed for the waters."
Bennett's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Of course."
As Dadaniel pricked his thumb to seal the oath, Wood missed the glint in the human's gaze—the look of a gambler holding five aces.
The Tyrant's Gaze
Dusk found them creeping through the defiled gorge. The fountain lay ahead, its once-crystalline pool now choked with blackened roots. Above it loomed the Tyrant's lair: a ziggurat of petrified treants, their frozen screams etched in sap-ice.
Hussein froze. "The eye…"
High in the structure, a slit of gold flickered open—an orb larger than a siege tower. The lidless gaze swept the canyon, pausing… lingering… on their hiding place.
Bennett's blood turned to slurry. It knows.