The giant crouched, looking over the top of the canopy with a sour expression. It scratched loudly at the dark bristles growing from its ruddy cheek, and the bulge below its bottom lip shifted disturbingly beneath the skin. The massive pockmarked face pulled inward before the flabby monster spat a brown chaw bullet into the damp soil.

“How will we know it’s the only one?” it boomed. “Could’ve made more since it took down the mouther.” The flabby creature shifted in its coarse brown tunic to look back at its companions. The other two sat a little ways off, with the broad, square-shaped one using a branch to draw in the dirt while the smallest of the three stirred an enormous cauldron.

“Once the fire topples that mangrove, you send Bjarke in and see if anything bites,” the square slab ordered.

“What?! You ent’ tossin' Bjarke to the wolves!” the smallest cried out, causing the larger two giants to round on it with a sound like earthquakes shaking underfoot.

“Shut it!!” the spitter hissed, holding a finger to their lips.

“Less you want it to be us!” the slab added in a hushed warning.

That seemed to shut the smaller titan up for a time, the broad expanses of their splotchy face looking chagrined. They silently dipped a wooden shaft topped with a soft-looking ball into the cauldron. It emerged coated in a dense black ooze.

“How long till it’s ready?” Spitter asked Small.

“Mornin'.”

“How many can you make?” Slab asked, tossing a huge log onto the bonfire below the pot.

“Only need one,” Spitter objected.

“We have plenty,” Small answered the original question.

“Best do at least three. Just in case,” Slab said with a restrained, rumbling laugh, prompting Spitter to hock another foul wad of chaw into the fire with a sizzling hiss.

“So Torulf shoots the tree. It burns down. Then we send Bjarke in to see if the coast is clear,” Small pondered. “If it is, then I guess I go down and grab the core. But what do we do with it after?” Slab’s answer was to pull a hefty metal hammer from his broad belt and thump it heavily into the ground.

“And what do we do if the blasted thing just extinguishes itself?” Spitter asked Slab. It was Small who answered, though.

“Plan B,” they explained, pulling out a shiny bauble filled with thick amber fluid. “I’ll toss it and we’ll run. We’ve only got the one, though, so we’re saving it in case we need to cover our exit.”

Scout shifted his roots carefully, sliding ever so slowly to one side until a towering cypress stood between himself and the giants. Breaking camouflage, he dashed between broad fern leaves as big as he was and made his way over to a sprawling mangrove. The low branches with shallow angles were easy enough to climb, giving him some much-needed elevation.

Perching atop a thick knot, Scout dropped a tiny wooden cylinder at the end of a long hemp rope. Snapping his arm upward, he put his all into swinging it four times overhead as fast as possible, before slowing down for three lazy arcs. The result was four piercing whistles and three low warbles. In the distance, many trees away, he heard the return call as Saboteur passed along the message, followed by Bushwhacker, and then the quiet echos of Sharpshooter after that.

Winding up the whistle, Scout jumped down to the ground and made for home. He would draw his pictures and tell his tale to the core. The core was wise. She would know what to do about the giants.

—

Torulf Marsh sat in the strong branches of a cypress, eyeing the hellish tree that had been twisted into a thing of blasphemy. It made the plum-soaked leaves in his mouth turn bitter at the thought. Below him, Bard used a polished metal disk hanging around his neck to silently get his attention with a flicker of light. Once they made eye contact, Bard gestured carefully.

*All clear?*

Torulf scanned the little islet again, seeing no sign of movement or life, and gave a slow nod.

*Gunnhild go south. Listen for crow before fire.*

Bard’s signals were primitive but effective. Torulf nodded again and the stocky wall of muscle below handed up his bow before pulling out two axes of his own. Gunnhild must have reached her place because a moment later he heard the echoing caw of her crow impression. Smiling smugly to himself, Torulf notched a pitch arrow and steadied himself on his branch. He hoped this thing worked like Gunnhild said. If it failed to ignite on impact, they were going to have a pissed off tree and a world of problems…

“Time to burn,” He whispered under his breath.

He straightened, setting his shoulders and drawing back the bow as he aimed. A loud *SNAP* came just an instant before the blazing line of pain sliced into his face. Blood blurred his vision as he pinwheeled, the world tilting away from him before the earth itself bludgeoned his kidneys with a ferocity that had him wondering if he owed it money.

Bard winced at the hollow thud of Torulf’s body hitting the ground. Dropping all pretense of stealth, he lumbered over toward his fallen kin.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Torulf! What happened?” The question answered itself as he reached the downed archer. The bowstring had snapped, whipping across Torulf’s face and giving him a nasty gash. He bent down, offering a hand to help him off the ground.

He’d been about to grab Torulf’s forearm when the larger man staggered, hopping slightly as a sharp pain lanced through his calf. The beefy man twisted awkwardly in his leather cuirass and grabbed at a slender shaft of wood protruding from just below the back of his knee. He yanked it out with a grunt as Torulf groaned, and stared in disbelief at the six-inch shaft half stained with his own blood.

“What the feck?”

A high-pitched trilling cut through Torulf’s pained exclamations and the distant caws of an increasingly confused Gunnhild. Bard took up a ready stance, favoring his injured leg, and looked upward toward the source. There, perched some fifteen feet up on a branch, was a tiny humanoid figure. The little wooden man gripped the branch with root-like toes and was spinning something on a short string over its head that seemed to be the source of the trilling whistle.

Bard’s expression furrowed into a scowl, as he snarled through gritted teeth.

“Leshies…”

In a smooth, practiced motion, the leshie snapped its hand down so the whistle wrapped swiftly about its waist, using its other hand to point ominously down at them in a silent order. Bard was pulling back, preparing to throw an axe at the thing, when the foliage around them seemingly erupted with tiny projectiles.

—

Gunnhild was crouched low, obscured by the tall grasses on the opposite side of the islet from the others. She had her hands cupped to her mouth, about to try a final, louder bird call, when she heard the screams. Something had gone wrong! The damned tree was still rooted in the pond, so there must be another threat.

Springing onto the balls of her feet, she dashed northward towards the shouting and curses of the others. When she heard her brother’s shriek of agony, she abandoned all caution. She’d just have to hope that the tree’s senses ended at the islet’s shoreline. She cut across, sprinting along the edge of the shallow stream.

“TORULF!!”

There was a crackle of bending wood as the accursed tree seemed to wake. To her horror, the mangrove was lumbering north, towards the others. It began weaving between the more mundane mangroves, moving like some verdant arachnid, trying to reach them. She couldn’t take the time to divert her path close enough to the thing to make use of the alchemist’s fire. She had to reach the others first. From the denser foliage ahead, Bjarke’s furry bulk shot like an arrow, yelping in pain as it bolted past her. On the heels of the hound, she could see Bard’s silhouette plowing through the last of the shrubs.

“BAR-“ The cry died on her lips as the world around her spun into darkness.

—

Bard only realized Torulf had fallen behind when he heard the archer’s plea from further back in the brush. He paused, looking back in time to see Torulf fighting with a dense patch of razor grass. He was trying to free his clothes from their grasp when the next volley fell from above. A slender sharpened stick pierced the bloodied man’s eye, eliciting a scream of agony as he tumbled back into the tall grass.

Bard wanted to turn back, but the barrage of tiny spears had him so harried that he dare not. The shafts that hit his armor bounced uselessly off of him, but it felt like every patch of exposed skin was bristling with the things. And they burned! Keeping his guard up to protect his face from spears and branches alike, he drove blindly forward to escape the onslaught.

When he stumbled out from beneath the shadows of the trees and onto the shore of the delta, he was finally able to part his guard enough to see. Gunnhild was sprinting in his direction, and the pair had a fleeting moment of eye contact. Whatever she’d been about to say was brutally silenced as a thick, gray-green vine snatched her ankle out from under her.

Bard skidded to a halt as his cousin’s face smashed into the ground with an audible crunch before she was rolled upwards into the dense canopy by the assassin vines. His adrenal haze parted for a transient breeze of reason, and he saw this for what it was. A trap. Another sharp pain stabbed into his shoulder as those demon leshies tried to drive him into the assassin vines.

In the distance, Torulf went suddenly silent. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way! There had to be a way out. Bard’s frantic scan revealed a hole in the dungeon’s plan. The tree. The tree was gone! It must have followed the screaming to Torulf and finished him off. Protecting the right side of his face from the leshie’s tree-line defense, he pivoted towards the stream and charged across the water.

He had to move fast. If he could reach that core and smash that red bitch to pieces, everything else would unravel. He just had to be faster than a tree…

—

Liv stood beside her guardian, which was hidden amongst the other mangroves that lined the western shore of her little island. She watched with an oddly blank expression, hands on her hips, as the big guy dove head first into the green pool that had once housed Masque’s den.

“Not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he?” she asked in a flat imitation of her usual humor. Giermund pulled its head out of the water to look at her, uncomprehending. At least that’s what she told herself it was. A wooden face and green glowing eyes didn’t make for much range in emotional expression.

“Never mind…” she sighed, shaking her head and patting the scarred mangrove’s bark. Her expression darkened into a grim resolve. “Just grab him, and fetch the other two. I have a message I want to send to these cultists.”

Liv turned away as Giermund strode into the water and pulled out the screaming man. Closing her eyes, she took several slow, deep breaths. She’d spent days obsessing over this dilemma, trying to prepare herself. Logically speaking, the answer was simple.

The muffled complaints of the other two captives were coming closer, barely audible over the cries of the man in Giermund’s massive claws.

“Simple arithmetic, Liv,” she whispered to herself. They were monsters. They were aligned with whoever made that abomination. They were murderers, either content with or possibly even in favor of the summoning sanity shattering elder beings. Beyond even that, she couldn’t risk them getting back home with information on her defenses. The leather clad punk widened her stance, setting her shoulders in a pose that projected a strength and conviction she didn’t feel.

“Do it,” came the simple command to her forces.

It had to be done.

Simple Arithmetic.

…

So why did the massive rush of SP feel so tainted?

—

Erik Marsh stood at the gate to the stead, eagerly awaiting news. The trio had been sent out nearly a fortnight ago, and his nephew a week after, when they hadn’t returned. Holda had wanted to be there with him to see what word there was of her husband, but he’d sent her off with the comforting lie that he was certain Bard was fine. As one of his nephews rode hard towards the gate on his exhausted sway-backed horse, Erik already knew what was coming.

The wiry teen’s steed barely kept its feet as the boy reached him and dismounted. The boney young man looked a touch faint, with dark circles under his skewed eyes. Erik spoke before the sweat-soaked lad could have a chance.

“They’re dead,” the old man said gravely. It wasn’t a question, though he answered it as if it had been.

“Yes,” he wheezed. “I found them. F-found their… their um…” he trailed off, disturbed. That gave Erik pause. He’d seen to it that all the Marsh children were raised with a firm hand and a strong stomach, knowing they’d need both. What could have the boy so rattled?

“Bodies?” he supplied, curiosity overcoming his disdain.

“Yessir,” the boy (Sveinn? It was hard to tell; his sister’s brood all looked alike) spoke in a shaky whisper.

“Then where are they?” Erik asked frostily.

“I c-couldn’t reach them. They were up…” the boy gulped. “Up in the trees.” Erik pinched his nose at that, sighing deeply.

“The dungeon must have more than one treant. You did the right thing running back as quick as you could. Go get cleaned up.”

“S-sir? There’s more,” the boy shuffled uncomfortably, shivering despite the afternoon warmth. Erik looked back up to meet his eyes, staring silently until the rider got the hint to continue. “They weren’t just dumped up there. They were… They…”

“SPIT IT OUT!” Erik barked, losing patience and not looking forward to passing on the grim news. The lad went rigid as a board and squawked.

“There was a message!”

Erik lifted one bushy gray brow and held out his hand for it, but the younger man shook his head.

“It was with them. On them. Something carved it into them…” The nauseous looking boy knelt shakily on the dirt path. “I didn’t recognize the symbols,” he explained, running his finger through the dirt. When he was done, he looked up at his Uncle. “What does it mean?”

Erik pulled out a pocket-sized leather tome, glancing at the familiar scrawl, and recited a brief incantation. The foreign letters twisted and rolled into more familiar runes as the spell translated the phrase before his eyes. Just three words.

“BEWARE THE MANGLEGROVE.”