“He went this way.” Jura hissed. Tyr was anything but stealthy, leaving deep and obvious footprints in the soft earth and mud. But he moved fast, and even at her best clip and fair knowledge of tracking, his beeline into the western end of the astral zone had been bizarrely hard to follow. Passing over ridges and leaving her looking for further signs of him before they could continue on. “This is a pain in my ass, why don't we just leave? We're free, right?”
Girshan shook his head in the negative. “Yes, and no. This is an admissible freedom from bondage, in court. I'm not confident in taking our chances trying to find a magistrate that the master hasn't paid off.”
“Indeed.” Abe nodded. “Our best bet is to find him and bring him back alive. Writ of life or not, the master will know by now that we've slipped our collars.”
“He's a part of the team.” Yana said. “You can leave if you'd like, but I would not leave him behind. We should at least try.”
“Irresponsible...” Jura's dark and full lips formed a straight line. “What an idiot.” She chuckled then, it wasn't so bad. Despite his stupidity, and her complaints, she didn't mind.
Abe nodded, saying nothing more. It was the red sun today, and it made him look even more scarlet than normal. The small amount of his blood red skin visible from beneath his voluminous robes glistening in the fel light. They'd only be free the moment they stepped beyond the borders of the republic into the domain of the primus' that had guaranteed them. Anything before that time came, they were still 'slave' enough to be in danger.
Primus' were revered and even worshiped by most humans. Transcendent beings, heroes greater than any mankind was capable of producing, and they were born that way. Children of gods. In the republic, and some successor states, it was a bit different. They had very little interest in doing so, but their ability to force their will on foreign countries was treading toward a breaking of the compact all primus' made with one another at the turning of the decade. Renewing their vows to not encroach on the sovereign territory of another. Only through a unanimous agreement between all of them could it be done, and not all primus' got along so well. They were like brothers, and brothers were often petty and quick to squabble. Just like their gods were said to do.
“You're being unfair.” Xavier showed some rare backbone when dealing with the more irascible of his 'big sisters'. “He didn't have to do this much for us, you know. We owe him.”
“I agree.” Girshan said. “A good turn deserves another, no matter who offered it first.”
“As do I.” Yana added her 'vote' to the conversation. “We've outlived our usefulness regardless. I would not be surprised if the master planned for us to die here, to begin with. At least – most of us. Especially considering recent events... You heard what Martin said... That he'd 'release us all'.”
“I am of the same opinion.” Abe nodded. “Girshan might've made it into the pits, but my debt was nearly paid. I do not doubt that he would have had me killed the moment I'd obtained my freedom.. I know too much as it is, and he's grown unstable of late...”
Jura paused, shushing them and waving her hand rapidly at the ground. She had the best senses out of all of them, born and trained to be a hunter, showing great talent for it even as a child. What most would need magic to facilitate, she needed only open her eyes and ears. They'd fought together for quite some time. Years, in the case of all except Xavier. It didn't take a verbal indication of approaching danger for them to lower themselves in a crouch to the ground. Inching away silently under a whispered spell from Abe to cushion their footfalls, moving into the lush ferns and melting into the shadows.
It took a moment for the others to hear it. The sound of rapidly padding boots and the metallic rustling of armor. Four men, two women – Jura signed to the others. Their races were unknown, but most of them smelled of man. Six became ten, and the rest of them began to arrive in the vicinity, stopping and looking about. A group of at least twenty, paladins by the looks of the one at the head. Her plate armor wholly out of place and an unwise choice of gear in a jungle environment. Even through the aid of magic, it was clear that she was hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable – her black hair and western features sodden.
Paladins were no good. Those who traveled about talking about law and justice, but every god had their own ideas about that – and near all thought themselves above a normal person. Paladins were those who had slaughtered Jura's family, leaving the rest for the slavers to clean up, not questioning the unjust nature of the act. All because the Laughing Moon had been forced to hunt outside of their reservation after a poor growing season.
“Tracks stop here...” They were loud. Too loud. Granted, moving silently in such a large group was an exercise in futility. But it was just a sign of how incredible dumb some highborn fops could be, either unconcerned or completely ignorant of how dangerous this region was. Those in the silver plate with blue tabards bearing a white rose were not adventurers, though they were accompanied by a handful of them what with the badges on their belts. “Orders?”
“Fan out and find them, they have to be here somewhere.” The woman who looked to be in charge said. “Diviner?”
“Apologies, captain, but something is interfering with my tracking spells...”
Jura resisted the urge to snort and bury a black arrow in that ones neck. It was common sense that dimensional magic and divination didn't work properly in astral spaces unless adjusted for. These were bits and pieces of another world. The rules were different. Some of them didn't even have mana, requiring mages to enter them with batteries charged with the stuff lest they collapse and wilt under the lack of energy. Whoever they were, they'd come here fast and unprepared, inexperienced too. Bringing paladins to an astral space to begin with had to be one of the most foolish things Jura had ever seen. Their goddess that they relied upon for blessings was not here. Priests would enter these spaces and find their powers greatly weakened, or gone entirely. Those who served as conduits for divine will rather than true mages, that is.
There was a time, long ago, where the churches had tried to lead 'great crusades' into more dangerous astral spaces. It hadn't gone well, as one might imagine.
The captain sighed, adjusting her gorget in a vain attempt to cool herself down. The the pool of sweat soaking her gambeson and filling her armor was not pleasant. Calling herself a fool for being so arrogant as to take her blessings for granted. She hadn't felt so hot and uncomfortable in years after ascending. Given gifts that no longer applied to her in this space, her magic helped but if she kept it up for something as petty as keep comfortable she might not have the gas to handle a real fight if one came.
“They have to be here somewhere.” She said, with more authority in her voice this time. “Find them by any means necessary!”
“Yes ma'am!” Men and women in plate and blue cloth saluted her. Saluted her loudly. Too loud for too long, all while remaining in the same place. Not in a proper formation, no watchers at the rear, no trees cleared to give a better line of sight. Humans were predators, but only the apex in their developed environments and with the right tools. This jungle was alien to them. Even in Agoron, one would be hard pressed to find a rain forest so dense and dark as this one – and the red sun above made things even worse. Their eyes didn't work quite right under the baleful scarlet bathing everything in sight. Making the wide brimmed leaves appear as spots of blood in their peripheral vision, the shadows were heavier and everything looked sharp.
A scaled body on two legs burst from the undergrowth, missing Jura's party by a distance no longer than the extension of Girshan's hand. Hunting easier found prey, not shrouded by Yana's illusion magic or Abe's enchantments. They moved with a whisper, every part of their body sleek and deadly.
A tall man currently busying himself with washing his helmet free of filth found his bowl cut head clamped and crushed between two wicked jaws. Full of long, dagger-like fangs. Collapsing to the ground lifelessly as the others stared at him in horror. The creature who had done so already disappeared into the murky red depths of the jungle. A long tail of arterial spray and the headless corpse were all that remained of its passage through the space.
“Contact!” Someone cried, fumbling for their sword before the arm holding it was cut free by slashing claws. He fell to the ground howling in agony, spraying blood from the stump in a crescent before another appeared – bothered by the noise and intent on ending it. It did, sending him flying, two powerful limbs ending in razor sharp talons punching effortlessly through his plate. Not much of them could be seen but a streak of shadow, monsters as red as the light around them – blending in perfectly with everything else.
“There's a lot, this time.” Yana hissed. Voice low so as not to disturb the wards protecting them. Any inside the dome would feel like they were somewhere between the lands of the living and the dead. Human eyes would see monotone colors and wisps of atmospheric mana blurring around the silhouettes of any living thing. With so much life all around and abundant in its wild growth, it made it hard to properly observe what was going on beyond the barrier. Only Jura could see things clearly, but the others had a pretty good idea.
This expeditionary force was slow to react. Swords were replaced by staves and spears, the troupe of paladins closing in on one another to form a ring of blades, with the few adventurers in the middle. One of them yelled out with an 'I told you so' before being slapped into silence by a member of his party. Silver rankers, by the look of their badges. People survive to make it to a rank like that without knowing a thing or two.
“Should we help them?” Xavier whispered, holding a marble sized chunk of magicite tight enough in his fist to draw blood.
Jura shook her head rapidly. Bringing a finger to her lips. Any louder, and they'd shatter the illusion. As powerful as it was, it had weaknesses. They could not move or speak in all but the barest of whispers. All of the others understood why, these paladins were likely here for them. Their church paid off by their master. It had happened before. Some 'champions of justice'. Tyr had made them aware long before that they were chasing him as well. Even if he hadn't, very few 'demihumans' would ever trust a paladin.
“Command, this is SAR-4. We are under attack by unknown assailants, requesting immediate assistance! We are closing in on the trail and have identified a path taken into the western half of the astral space. Over.” One of the adventurers was shouting into his badge, a pseudo communications amulet designed for short range transmission. One of the main purposes of the relay stations were to facilitate contact between teams in such a large space. “Understood. Holding position.” The adventurer was a kijin, like Xavier, but appeared a bit older. His horns fully grown and the blade-like marks beneath his eyes fully grown in.
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He pulled at the detachable tip of a rod and pointed it into the air, sending a flare skyward that hovered some thirty meters above the canopy with a flickering emerald radiance.
“Command, SAR-4 has lit the flare. Setting countermeasures now. Yes. Yes. Understood.”
“ETA, sixteen minutes!” He shouted, pulling another device from his dimensional ring and thrust it into the ground. Trees wilted and turned to ash as soon as the device pierced the earth, clearing a space of roughly thirty meters, drawing on the local atmospheric mana to give them a better line of sight. Unfortunately, that same mana was exactly what Yana was reliant on to keep such a powerful illusion running. She yelped in pain as the sound of shattering glass filled her mind, alerting both the paladins and the monsters to their position.
At least fifty, with more beyond the ring of trees. One of the paladins let out a strangled groan, seeing the arrayed creatures, rumbling deep in their throats as the disturbance of mana drove them into a rage. Tall things, standing at a similar shoulder height to a horse. Two long legs set with wicked black talons, short arms similarly clawed. Scaled like a lizard, but with feathers framing the crown of their head and necks like a bird. It was hard to tell under the red-green light, but each and every one of them seemed to be competing for a vibrancy of color in their fringe. Barking throaty calls into the forest to draw the fringe elements of their pack to their location.
“Raptid!” The adventurer responsible for the communication of his group cried out in alarm.
Their captain's voice came next. “Close ranks! Spears up! Tulius!”
“Yes ma'am!” Tulius dropped to a knee, removing his gauntlets with shaking hands before thrusting his bared digits into the earth. Girshan was cradling Yana, growling like a beast at the monsters eyeing them warily. These paladins didn't seem so dangerous, but raptids were ambush predators. Smart ones. They didn't go after something without supreme confidence in ending it in a way that left them as little liability as possible. They bared their own fangs at Girshan, but made no move, stalking around the party.
Unlike the paladins, the raptid did not smell fear. The senses of a monster went beyond that of normal mortal creatures, and emotion was magnified in this astral space. Fear was good, no fear was bad. Raptid were incredibly intelligent, but they were still beasts.
This pause was enough for Tulius to break the earth and summon a bubbled disc around them, whipping them across the ground and causing all but Jura and Girshan to lose their footing and roll awkwardly into the earthen barrier holding them within the rising earthworks. With practiced movements, the paladins opened their formation. Like the flowing of water, ever step was in perfect harmony with the man or woman at their right and left. Allowing the one-time slaves to enter the middle of their formation. Cramped and crowded as it was, it was safe, for now.
“Good afternoon.” The kijin said cheerily, kneeling down to take a look at Yana. He ignored the toothy snarl of Girshan, tipping a vial of red liquid into her mouth with a steady hand. “She'll be fine, I had no idea you were there. Some impressive ward. What rescue team are you a part of?” He asked, turning to look between Jura, Abe, and Girshan in turn. His eyes lingered on Xavier, but it was clear he was trying to identify exactly who was the captain of their party.
“We're not.” Jura spoke, as domineering as ever. “We were here before... This? What is this?”
“We've been sent here to extract a silver rank adventurer from the astral space. I can't say much more than that. White hair, tall, kind of rude. Seen him?”
“Tyr...?” Xavier looked at his fellow kijin with a conflicted look. Who else could it be? White hair wasn't exactly common in these parts, but neither were kijin. Most of their kind had been killed long before he'd been born, with the rest living in small communities far to the south beyond the reach of Varia.
“Ah. So you know him? That makes things easier. Name's Benny, by the way.”
“I don't care who you are.” Jura growled. “We thought you were here for us. What do you want with Tyr?”
“Lady.” Benny squinted up at her. “I have no idea who you are, and I don't care. I just want to save my friend.”
“...Friend?” Xavier had begun tilting his head as Tyr did. Some bizarre mimicry that in less dire circumstances would've made the others laugh and perhaps exchange a copper or two.
“Your debrief can wait!” The captain cried, that woman speaking as fast as words could leap out of her mouth. Inexperienced with monsters, perhaps, but some talent for command. “Enemy closing! Spears up and forward, mages focus on disturbing the earth to slow their foot speed. Keep to testudo! A man falls, we pull him to the center for healing so that we may cycle through the ranks.”
“Aye!”
“Abe?” Jura asked, turning toward the old telurian. He looked tired, but it stood to reason. The mana in this place had become more oppressive and was beginning to weigh on his spirit. More wild than it should be, increasing over the course of the past several days. For a mage, it was both a gift and a curse. Something that would bolster their power and allow them to reach for the next level, but it was not comfortable. Most would fall into fever, developing shakes after the first few hours and falling ill shortly after.
Abe cleared his throat, nodding before dragging himself up to his feet and slamming his staff into the ground. “All those of the earth, all that is living, let my life become your own. Know me and mine as dear companions.” The rune about his neck burst into life, letting loose with a thunderous groaning. Like a tree bent under a force of wind. Like branches and boughs creaking in the breeze, something that should not come from a living mouth. His words began to come faster, until his common became telurian and his telurian became unintelligible. “Blood of the earth, sap of the trees by my right as guardian I call--”
The bloodshot reptilian eyes of the rapids recovered from the debilitating discomfort of the anchor. Turning back to anger as their alpha, one twice as tall as the others made himself known, stalking through the trees at the edge of the magical cordon, just as Abe's spell came to life. He sagged, life fleeing him as every drop of his mana seemed desperate to leave his body, falling into the waiting arms of Jura.
Trees shuddered and split, their roots drinking from his power to open like blooming flowers, introducing a wide variety of stilt limbed humanoid creatures into the clearing. Where there would be flesh was only a gnarled and twisted body of bark and wood. Limbs made of roots with grasping hands laying into the monsters around them after they'd drawn their first shuddered breath. Terrifying, they were. Unthinking constructs of natures fury. Like the ent or the dryad, brought into temporary life through Abe's sacrifice of vitality. A druid's ritual of exchange and summoning.
But that wasn't all. Where there was once smooth and ashy ground, life returned to the clearing with abandon. Wild and unnatural growths of thorny roots bursting from the forest floor to drag the monsters into their embrace, flaying them alive with a violence disconnected from the tranquility breached by druids. All the monsters successfully caught in this predatory web of barbed roots were dragged together. Crushed and ground into one pile of bloody viscera, blood absorbed back into the plant life around them. The more dragged into it, the more red the roots became. Until half the numbers of the raptors had been consumed and the ent creatures threw themselves into the pile with shuddering groans and clicks of their bark limbed maws.
What emerged was a hulking mass of blackened wood. An incredible stench of decay, all mixed together with a cloying, sweet aroma of the flowers that grew and wilted in an endless cycle. Twisted roots worming and writhing around one another to stand at least six meters tall. A titan of the life cycle, radiating a fel power. Two moss green orbs came to life in the empty sockets of the skull of the alpha raptid. An amalgamation of life that alternated between dark and rotting, or green and full of life. Flowers would bloom before wilting before they could fully blossom. A living time lapse of the the natural cycle. It towered over them, unblinking and still, before erupting into a cacophonous roar that shook the ground.
Both a jubilant cry to celebrate it's birth into this world, and a knell of infinite sorrow that caused every soul around it to shudder along with the ground. A dark pal fell on them, pushing them all to the earth beneath the might of the creature.
“Elder leshen... That's an elder leshen...” Benny breathed, fishing a black rod set with a crimson stone from his dimensional ring and pointing it at the creature with shaking hands. Until that focus rod was slapped from his grip by one of the scores of roots burst like tentacles from the ground. “Ah, shit!” He screamed, as did the others. All of them lifted up by the thorny roots digging into their skin. The raptids were a secondary concern now. What once had been their salvation had become their doom, by the looks of it.
A leshen was not a monster, but an elemental. Living and dead at the same time, but neither in totality. A representation of the natural balance, and not one to scoff at. That was just a leshen. The 'normal' kind were gold ranked monster, and elder leshen was far worse. A terror of the void that would only arrive in their respective planes after a truly massive amount of hard had been done to the environment. An embodiment of the forests revenge. Inadvertently given life by Abe after his summoning ritual, one of the many perils of astral spaces and how they influenced magic.
“What do we do!?” Xavier chewed on the metal, cutting himself free from a dozen roots before yet more black tendrils burst from the earth, blanketing him. “What do we d--” He choked, caught in a cocoon of the things and squeezed beyond the capacity for his metal body to handle. Forcing him to drop the spell before his body shattered like glass.
Abe rose, shaky. At second inspection, he was the only one of them that had not been taken by the roots. They parted respectfully before him as he approached the leshen and knelt to the ground. It observed him with an unblinking eye, no more than a sideward glance.
“...Guardian.” It had no throat to speak, it's words formed from the creaking of its roots and the whispering breeze on the air. “Friend of the forest. Nature does not kneel. You are us, our kind stand.”
“Great elder.” Abe's words were somber and grim. He had made a terrible mistake. Magic behaved differently at times inside the astral space. With the rising mana levels refining the life force of monsters, it was no surprise that such a thing had happened. His summoning ritual simply invited elements into the world. It did not give him the reins to command and control them as he pleased. To think that an elder leshen, of all things, had taken root in the soil below... He had mistakenly given it the last bit of energy it needed before being born in this place. “We mean your forest no harm, please free my companions.”
“Companions, yes. Friends, too.” An alien voice for an alien being, borne of pure force of life. Raptids screeched and howled, calling for the others at the death of their alpha. Mad with a lust for blood, though they knew better than to approach the forest of thorns that swathed the clearing. The leshen released Jura, Yana, Xavier, and Girshan. Leaving the paladins hanging, screaming for mercy and aid from those who'd been set free. Lina, their commander, was frozen by the familiarity of what was happening.
“But not them.” It groaned, burning emerald eyes staring at those who remained suspended. “They are not friends.”
Just as the thing seemed intent to end it all, a single figure streaked into the clearing like a black bolt – slamming into the elementals chest.