The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Tree
The Twenty-Forth Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.
Blacktree Hall, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.
So, this was it then. The end of his house. One miscalculated move, the death of his old friend Tyros, and two cases of misplaced trust. That was all it had taken to topple his dynasty.
To think, he had wanted to give his son this second chance to prove himself. Well, it seemed safe to say that his assumptions of his children's inferiority were definitely not misplaced, not that such a thought brought him anything even resembling comfort.
Aertax had gambled once again, and at long last the die had come up wanting. He had lost.
"Father, we need to leave. The huntsknights can only keep their thin corridor leading to the deepwoods open for a little while longer; we need to leave now."
There was concern in his son's voice, worry for his life. He barely resisted the urge to scoff at the boy; his son was the one that had thrown all of this away, his son and that over-ambitious Teleytaian turncoat.
Not that Aertax was particularly absolved of blame on the ambition front, but then how could he have been expected to predict the assassination of his long time right-hand man? How could he have expected the young Prince Lykourgos to have defied military convention and march so far in so short a time? It had defied all military convention, and had the weather been worse or the campaign taken place but a month earlier amidst the harvest and heavier rains then the Prince's gambit would almost certainly have floundered and failed, rendering his forces tired and ineffective against Lieutenant Isen's army of sellswords, expatriates, traitors, and levied Blackoak men.
Instead the rains had appeared almost as soon as the Prince's army had been set up, and according to his agents observing the battlefield the rains had been both heavy and had blown in the faces of Isen's army, effectively blinding them until they had blundered into the prepared Teleytaian positions.
It was almost as though the prince had garnered the favour of Hydran himself in his wars. A foolish thought posited to him by a lesser member of his house, and one that had been banished almost as soon as the point had been made. What use was attempting to pass on blame for their mistakes when the forces of the foe were bearing down on them?
And for that matter, why would Hydran have blessed the nation of his patronage when Arnka had not blessed Owkrestos in this war? The conjecture surrounding a clash of deities over so disastrous a conflict was laughable, especially considering the people of both nations gave thanks to both Arnka and Hydran as well as the other Angels.
"Leave. Leave?" He spat the word as he looked out over the balcony, over the spot where the only sapling of the Black Oak was sprouting. "This is where our family was supposed to rule from, my son. This place is where our family will die."
"We do not need to die here, father. Throw away your pride and-"
"I did not say that the people of this family will die here, boy. I said that the family will die here. With the fall of Blacktree Hall our house will be functionally gone. These are the last moments of house Blackoak. Our thousand-year stewardship of these lands is over."
Despite the banners of the younger of the two princes of Teleytaios appearing on the horizon Aertax kept his gaze on the sapling of the Black Oak at its place in the centre of the main courtyard. He'd never placed much stock in family legends, had never cared for the writings and babblings of men who had died hundreds of years before his great-great-grandfather had even been born, but for some reason he now felt that there was something important about that tree.
When the Silence had burned the Black Oak, had destroyed the original home of his family, legend said that his ancestors had fled to the place where Blacktree Hall now stood with the only remaining sapling from the Black Oak. Here they had planted it, nurtured it, defended it.
It had only been a tree. That's what he'd told himself. It was only a tree. A strange tree, one that appeared jet-black with obsidian-coloured leaves, but no different than any other tree aside from its grim countenance. It had only been a tree.
So why did he now feel it was so important? Why, after a lifetime spent ignoring it, ignoring that slight pull to the base of the sapling, did he feel it was calling to him?
Had the legends grandfather once spoken to him of ever been just that, or had they been something more? Had their been kernels of truth in those tales of ancient times, of magics and the fae?
He did not know. There was no-one alive who knew. Those who had once known, who would have been able to tell him if such stories were true or if they were merely fancies and fables told around campfires, had been dead for more than a millennia. There was no-one to tell him what was true or not here.
"-ther? Father?"
He tuned back in to see his daughter there, looking worried.
"Yes?"
"Will you not come with us, father?"
She looked on the verge of tears, his daughter. His daughter. What had she been called again? It began with an A, didn't it? Ah, it didn't matter. He needed to get down to the tree. There was something strange about it, and he needed to figure it out.
He needed to see to the tree. He needed to make sure it would be alright.
"Begone, both of you. Take up with the 'Company of the Most Righteous and Dispossessed Nobility of Klironomea Forced Abroad' if you so wish, as if the lengthy title could substitute for its lack of true glories."
"We could go to Anatolikoi, father. Gather all the wealth, men, and supplies we can; supplant the Mad Count of Mytenaeopolis, lay down the roots of our family there. We could take over the island in time, and one day return to the mainland."
Aertax shook his head.
"An island of traitors, cowards, and failures. I will not sully the name of this house by moving to so bleak a place. No, my fate lies here. You two will go, and I will stay here. Alone. This castle was our family's second chance after the fall of our original home to the Silence, and we have faltered here as well. There is nothing left for us outside these walls, and there is nothing left for us within them either. Our family name will be but scattered legends and tales told by the smallfolk for the next hundred years before we fade completely. I will die here, alone, and the house will go with me."
"No father," his son and heir replied, "if you are to die here then I will as well."
"YOU WILL DO NO SUCH THING!" He roared back at his son. "Do you see the banners setting up camp outside out walls even now? Those are the banners of Prince Rhema, boy! The damnable foreign conqueror hasn't even deigned to come here himself; we face the child that bested you, my son.
"Go. Take up arms with the Noble Sons Abroad, or flee to Anatolikoi and earn yourself some scraps there. I care not for what you do anymore, only that you live.
"I have been a harsh father most of my life, and you have disappointed me at every turn. Now I command you as the head of this house to live, and to make sure your sister lives as well. Do not disappoint me again."
"Ser Aered, we need to leave now! My lady, yourself as well! We cannot hold the passage to the woods any longer!"
Aertax locked eyes with his son, nodded stiffly, received a solemn nod in return, and then the room emptied and he was alone.
Legends, legends, legends. He'd always despised legends. They were tales designed to keep men weak, to force then to remain content with the knowledge that they could not strive for greatness because they could not possibly hope to match the feats of those who had came before. He had hated the legends surrounding the Black Oak and its sapling the most, the legends of the Faerie King and the Lord of the Hollow Hill, of the Lady of the Whistling Trees and her handmaidens. He had hated the legends of those fae-born creatures, of mythical beings figuratively tied to the Black Oak. He hated that his ancestors had deluded themselves into thinking that such creatures existed, that their family had for some reason been chosen to safeguard the Black Oak and later its sapling when in reality it was only important as a symbol to their house.
Yes, he had always hated legends. But that was just the thing; he had hated legends.
Now, in his final hours, he could not help but find himself be fascinated by them.
What if those legends and myths had been true? What if the tales weren't all falsehoods. Angels, why had he never looked into so strange and enticing a subject sooner? Would the library even have any of the books about the legends that father had so loved within its stores, or would the bookkeepers have evicted them from the shelves as he had instructed them to when he had first taken power so long ago. Would those books have even been worth reading if they were still there? Would the retellings of ancient tales within their pages have been anywhere close to the truth of what had happened, if anything, so long ago?
Pah, damn it all. What was even the point of any of this? He could see the last of the huntsknights flee into the woods to the north, and knew that his son and his daughter were with them. Funny, he thought to himself, that all of a sudden I should be so drawn to that damnable, contemptuous tree, can recall every myth and legend I was told by grandfather and father about it that I once forced from my head, and yet I can barely remember their names. What was father's name again...
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He thought long and hard. What had father's name been? Lord... Lord something, wasn't it? No, Lord was father's title. And grandfather, who had he been? What had he been called? It had been so long since he had known either of them, he could hardly remember their faces. What had... what were his children called, actually? What had he named them?
It didn't matter what aspect of his family he tried to turn his mind to, be they the names of those once closest to him or the sigils of the many cadet branches that he was almost certain his family had. The only aspect of his family that remained in his mind was the image and the legends of that damned sapling in the courtyard.
Well, if that was how his last moments were going to be then he may as well go and look at it properly for perhaps the first time since he'd been- well, for the first time since father had still been the Lord of the house, that much was certain.
He stalked through the now almost empty hall of his once grand castle, only the men manning the walls and guarding the gates remaining. Everyone else who could had fled, and Blacktree Hall was quieter than he could ever remember it being.
Strange, wasn't it? How in the midst of war and violence everything was so... so quiet. How, despite the fact that there were thousands of armed men awaiting violence or baying for blood, they all remained silent for now. It could almost be mistaken for calm, if it were not for the dread and anticipation that hung over the air like a plague-ridden miasma.
War had never unsettled him. Had never unmanned him. He was no renowned warrior, true, but he had never shied away from combat either. He was willing to admit that he wasn't the greatest tactician the world had seen, but he had certainly proved his abilities to be greater than average.
He was not a hero, for he was something far greater; he was a lord, and lords beat heroes every time.
He vaguely recalled the wars and conflicts of his youth, in some distant corner of his mind that yet remained unfocused on the tree. He had been ruthless to those who had fallen to him, unwilling to risk having the descendants of the lords he vanquished rise up to kill him, and it seemed that in turn this new conqueror would be just as ruthless to him.
The grand gates of the central keep, at once austere and yet resplendent, barely caught his attention as he strode on by. The evening sun was beginning to set now, the sky taking on shades of yellow and pink as the long rays cascaded over the battlements giving everyone awaiting the end within a few more minutes before darkness fell.
And then, soon enough, he found himself stood before that damned tree. It was still only a sapling, and yet already it stood several times taller than him with gnarled branches of ebon make and glinting obsidian leaves.
He scowled up at the damnable thing, as if it were the one responsible for the ruin now facing his family. Why in Arnka's name had they bothered to keep the bloody thing here? Why had his family insisted on protecting it for so long? It was just a tree. It was just a fucking tree, wasn't it?
Just a fucking tree. What a waste of a thousand years of effort. All of that to keep a tree safe. A strange-looking tree, but just a fucking tree.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, scowling at that useless waste of a garden-plot. He wasn't sure when he'd taken out his dagger and rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, nor was he sure exactly how much blood he'd drawn out and let spill onto the soil that nourished the confounded thing. He didn't know. All he did was scowl at that tree, and the next moment he was like this.
But oh, what things he saw as he realised what he'd done. Images of different places, different times, strange creatures of an otherworldly nature. So many things did he see, so many terrible pasts and lost futures, that for the longest moment he wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and weep. He, who had not shed a tear since the death of his wife decades ago, who had not cried at the funeral of his own father, wanted to weep. It seemed so strange.
He'd seen antlered men call upon storms and shades to batter ancient monsters into submission. He'd watched as a tall woman with purple skin had clasped a hand to her mouth in horror, herself watching as a second sun illuminated the skies and rent the land as it seemed to race towards her. He'd watched the same battlefield between two mountains be fought over by a hundred armies in a thousand battles over ten-thousand years, each side leaving the bones and helms of the dead in their haste to leave the cursed field.
He'd seen mankind at its very worst, and mankind at its very best. He'd felt creatures beneath his feet try to claw their way up from the abyss towards him, had felt them repulsed by something he couldn't see but knew innately was anathema to these things, had seen spirals and sigils dance across his vision and flash into his mind-
And then he had been stood there, in front of the black oak's last sapling, and had barely had the strength to move himself to a sitting position against the trunk of the tree.
Eventually he was able to manoeuvre himself down and rest himself on the reddened soil, old bones aching and sore as he felt the bark against his skin. It was cool to the touch, and if he closed his eyes and focused just so he was certain that he could almost feel a faint pulsing emanating from somewhere within the wooded body of the onyx tree. For the briefest moment it almost felt as though the tree had a pulse, a heartbeat, blood rushing in hidden veins beneath the surface, but it was so quick to disappear that he was uncertain whether what he had felt was real or just the result of blood loss and- well, he supposed it must have been magic.
He hated the idea that magic was real, and apparently had been real this whole time. He hated the idea that magic had always been there in the background, patiently watching the world of man race by. He hated that he didn't understand any of this, that no-one understood or ever would understand any of it. He hated the idea that this was magic, and yet he loved it at the same time. Touching the tree, giving over his blood to nurture it, had awakened something that he now suspected had always been in the blood of his family; it was why his family were so tied to the Black Oak and its sapling, why so many legends in Owkrestos were tied to his family name.
There was something 'otherworldly' about the tree. Some sort of innate connection that he had ignored in favour of a lifetime spent in the pursuit of furthering the interests of his dynasty. Did he regret that?
No. No, he did not. It was a shame he had not realised that the family legends had grains of truth in them sooner, but he was not ashamed to have lived his live as he had. He had performed the duties of any feudal lord who found himself to be the patriarch of a family, and had placed the security and prestige of said family above all else. There was no shame to be had in that.
He closed his eyes for a while, flitting in and out of wakefulness beneath the tree. Had it been any other point in his life he would have never been seen in so vulnerable a position, but there wasn't really anyone around to see him anymore. There were only the soldiers on the walls, and they had far more pressing issues to deal with than their liege lord lying against a tree in the earliest hours of the evening.
There was a slight chill in the air, the autumnal season reaching its peak before winter's arrival, and yet he felt no coolness save that of the bark against his back and the soil beneath his legs. It was a pleasant night out, cool but not truly cold. A light chill, nothing more. Perhaps to those further north this would have been considered the warmest weather they'd ever seen, but he cared only for the opinions that he had and not the opinions of some barbarians from a region of the continent that had never known true civilisation, save perhaps when the Barracks-Kings marched forwards to subjugate them. To him it was pleasantly cool out, and that was all that mattered.
The sun passed down beyond sight behind the curtain wall, and at last it was truly dark outside.
When he looked up he could hardly see the leaves of the tree, the blackness of the sky mingling with the outlines of the tree so much that he almost felt as if he were leaning against a part of the night sky instead of wood and earth. Strange for his thoughts to turn so poetic and melancholic when he'd spent his whole life shunning such concepts, but then he supposed it was far from the strangest thing that had happened these last few hours.
He closed his eyes again, and this time willed them to stay shut so he might receive a few hours of rest. He thought to his son and daughter, who's names had fled from his memory already thanks to whatever grip the tree seemed to have on his family in their final days, and hoped that they had reached some form of safety. He'd heard of the atrocity that the invading prince had visited upon the former nobility of his homeland, and had no wish to see his own children struck down or strung up in a similar fashion. He hoped they would be safe.
He opened his eyes a crack to see that it was now daytime, though he could not see the sun through the patches of light-grey clouds hanging over the castle. How long had he been there, asleep beneath the shade of the tree that for so long had been his family's charge? He did not know. Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Had he even been asleep, or were the gaps in his memory simply getting worse?
He did not know. All he knew was that the tree was special. He saw it now, understood why it was here, why it was to be protected. He saw those places that the roots reached: pockets of time in which stranger creatures and fairer folk had walked these lands. He saw the stone that the roots touched, the blood that flowed to nourish them as lesser trees and lesser men were nourished by healing waters. He had gazed into an abyssal past, present, and future, and could only find himself growing weary as he looked upon the wonders of other times.
There was a commotion at the gates as a large boulder smashed through it at an almost perfect angle, splintering the heavy oaken doors and shattering the wrought iron portcullis. Aertax watched for a few seconds, heard the panic of his loyal men as they attempted to cobble together a barricade from the rubble where the gate and the mechanisms housing it had once been, heard the victorious cries of the foreigners outside his gates who could no doubt smell blood in the water. Very soon this would all be over, and what was left of his family's legacy would burn.
Not all of it, he thought to himself as he stole a last glance at the black sapling. Something here will remain.
He had no fear of the tree being felled or burned. Not now. Not when it had been able to influence even the likes of him. The sapling would remain here, and here it would grow for centuries more. It was important somehow, important in a way that he both innately understood and yet could not grasp even the faintest idea of. Had this been how father had felt, all those years ago? He'd found himself similarly enraptured by the tree in his final moments after all. Was that why he had been so frantic to reach the tree?
He supposed he would be able to ask the old man soon enough. Just a little while longer now and everything would be over. Soon enough the Black Oak sapling would know a new steward, one whom would carry on his families work.
Aertax moved back through the courtyard and through the empty halls of the central keep, just about managed to stagger his way back up the stairs, and collapsed in a chair in his study. He was weary from blood loss and the weight of the world, and yet found himself to be content in his actions. Had it been nothing more than the foolish act of a man delirious with loss and bitterness? Mayhap. But if there was a chance for his blood to nurture that strange and confounded tree, to ensure it lived onwards and continued... continued doing what he didn't know, but continued doing whatever it was that his family had once known it did, then that would be worth it.
It would have to be, for it would soon be all that remained of his family legacy.
Aertax thought back on his life, from the moment his father had perished up until this very moment. He had been, and none could possibly disagree, the greatest Blackoak to have lived. He would also be remembered as the last true ruler of house Blackoak.
Oh, he knew that one or two of the cadet branches were likely to be kept around as lesser lords, ones who were more akin to administrators and tax collectors than actual feudal nobility, but the true strength of house Blackoak would be gone forever.
There was a series of great crashing noises as yet more stones and boulders rained down on his castle, of steel meeting steel as the men fought in the courtyard, but he was too tired to concern himself with any of that. Instead he slumped down a little in his chair, closed his eyes, and waited for the end to come to him. A few moments later the ceiling itself seemed to give way under the weight of trebuchet ammunition, and the stone slabs of the roof collapsed downwards.
"Father, grandfather, Tyros. I'll see you soon, old friends."