The sun, filtered through the smoke of the volcano, bathed the sweltering desert in a blood-red light. The ash churned and swirled, forming angry clouds that rained flakes of gray soot. The miasma made it impossible to see more than twenty yards in any direction.
Aside from the rumbling deep within the earth and the lightning high above them, an uncanny stillness filled them with unease. There was no life here. Everything was choked by the slag and smog, heavy and dry and oppressive. It smelled sour and stung their eyes.
Even sound was muted in the red haze.
Hag led them silently north along the volcano’s eastern embankment. They could sense a darkness now, burbling in their chests. A tension in the air. This was an unholy place. They could feel it in the air, in the earth. It permeated reality like an inky stain.
The ground was rippled and uneven, like a river of magma had flowed and rolled here recently. The rocks were brittle and hot. Nate clicked, and Garthim stopped.
Ahead, in the haze, vaguely humanoid shapes had appeared. Sam drew her spear. They approached cautiously.
The figures were stone pillars, similar in shape to a stalagmites, but formed from volcanic stone as if something had pulled the molten rock upward like taffy.
An unknown artist had carved the obelisks into beastly shapes; unspeakable creatures with fanged mouths, bulging eyes, and clawed tentacles. No two were exactly alike, but they all reminded Nate of the Archivist, the mad beast that had fractured their minds with its mere presence at the Forbidden Library.
They wound their way carefully through the sentinels, which dotted the landscape like tombstones. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of the effigies.
Once again, they were forced to stop and stare in mute dread. A colossal pillar of pyroclastic stone overshadowed them. Roughly fifty feet in diameter, it too had been carved into a monstrous face. It resembled a deformed human, an amalgam of mouths and tongues and eyes, as if through some horrifying science experiment, several faces had been fused and melted together.
Bare teeth, crooked and sharp, gaped at them. At the top, the peak dissolved into a chaotic mess of thin branches of sulfurous stone, like the giant tangle of Christmas lights Nate’s dad cursed every year as they decorated the tree. The strange geological formation twisted and wound upward, disappearing into the choked mist.
They rode on in silence. They passed three more of the mountainous faces among the sea of small statues. The feeling of dread and horror only increased with each step. Garthim bucked and halted.
“Come on,” Nate said softly, clicking the command to proceed. Garthim took another step and then reared and scrambled back like a terrified cat.
Nate tried again to coax his mount to continue. Garthim refused.
“I guess we continue on foot,” Sam said. They tied their clackers to one of the pillars.
“How close are we, Hag?” Nate asked.
“Very.” Even Hag, usually peppering them with annoying questions and sarcastic insults, was subdued.
Trudging through the forest of sculptures, they could hear a faint voice. The Queen of Storms, chanting in the language of the Ancients.
“Can you understand what she’s saying?” Sam whispered.
Nate cocked his head and listened. “It’s difficult to hear and I’m still learning the language. Something about a sacrifice, and Behalah needs to awake, because Behalah is… taking a nap? And needs a snack? That can’t be right.”
“How should we do this?”
Nate thought for a moment. “I dunno. Maybe we both try to sneak up from different sides? If she spots one of us, then the distraction might give the other enough time to free Charlie?”
Sam ran her tongue along her teeth. “I’d sure like to kill her.”
“Well, yeah. But could we even do that? While also ensuring Charlie doesn’t get murdered?”
“Probably not,” Sam sighed.
“Let’s just focus on saving our idiot friend.”
“Fine, but if I see a chance to kill her, I’m gonna take it.”
“Fair enough. At least we know this is, for sure, the final boss, right?”
“Yeah, this would be the perfect time for Gadium the White to show up.”
They waited hopefully, but were met with an ominous rumble from the Furnace. They crouched, moving more methodically between the grotesque statues.
An eerie blue light glowed in the murk ahead of them. They could see the faint outline of a platform in the brume, rough-hewn and craggy with great bubbles of stone scattered across its uneven surface.
Nate held up a fist and stopped, crouching low to the ground. He turned to Sam. He ran through a series of hand gestures he half-remembered from the bad Steven Seagal movies his father had loved so much.
Sam’s face twisted in confusion. He repeated the gestures, which to him made perfect sense, but, to any sane human, looked more like an awkward line dance routine you’d see at a drunken family reunion in Texas.
Sam’s confusion only spurred him on into more elaborate gestures, until she finally slapped him in the back of the head.
Sam pointed to her chest, and pointed further west. Then she pointed at Nate, and pointed straight at the platform.
Nate nodded, and gave her the thumbs-up. She rolled her eyes, and disappeared into the ashen fog.
Nate crept forward. His heart pounded in his throat. The platform fully emerged from the fetor. He could see the Queen of Storms, standing with her arms outstretched, facing the volcano.
In her left hand, she held the Heart of Trees; in her right, a long, twisting ceremonial dagger made from two metals, one a shining silver ore, the other glowing an incandescent blue.
In front of her was an altar, formed from the volcanic slag itself. From a central base, a long, flat table rose. There, Nate could see Charlie, bound in iron chains, his limbs stretched to the four corners. He had been stripped bare, but appeared relatively unharmed as he occasionally tugged futilely at the chains that bound him.
On the other side, a monstrous head emerged from the mountainside. The horror of its shape - something utterly inhuman, an incomprehensible blasphemy - gnawed at Nate’s mind. He knew what he was seeing, but his mind couldn’t put words to it.
A sentient black hole. The destroyer of worlds. The crawling desecration. The endless void beyond space and time. None of the words Nate knew could convey what he saw. This was destruction. This was chaos. This was madness. Its name… was Behalah.
The Queen of Storm’s voice continued to chant the aberrant words of the Ancients. Nate still struggled to understand her prayer; something about rebirth, awakening the napping beast, restoring balance. Not that it mattered much.
Nate crept slowly closer, amazed by his sudden need to cough and sneeze, and how loudly his boots scuffed each rock as he moved. His head swam anytime he looked at the face on the mountain, so he kept his eyes glued to the ground.
He reached the edge of the platform, and inched his way closer to Charlie along its ridge, his back pressed flat against it.
He cautiously peaked over the lip. The altar and his shackled friend were now less than fifteen feet from him. But so too was the Queen of Storms. Six feet in along the uneven platform, there was a large bubble of rock that stood three feet off the ground. If he could slither to it, he might be able to make a break for Charlie before the Queen could strike him dead.
Maybe.
As Sam quickly and silently ran to the far side of the platform, she came to the edge of the volcano where the platform emerged. Picking her way up the escarpment, she could see that the platform attached to the mountain along both its southern and western edges.
From her higher vantage point, she could clearly the Queen of Storms, Charlie, and the monstrous head. Sam was much more adept at averting her gaze from things she did not want to see, having been on the receiving end of countless dick pics during her high school years. Sensing the madness that awaited by allowing her gaze to linger, it was easy to avoid looking directly at it.
And at the blasphemous head carved into the mountain.
She picked her way down the mountainside toward the platform. She saw Nate creep carefully over the edge, and wriggle behind a stone near the altar.
Sam pursed her lips. Though he had crouched behind the rock, it was too small for his frame, and the top of his head was clearly visible.
The Queen of Storms turned toward him. “I know you’re there. I can see your hair behind that rock.”
Nate’s head slowly descended out of sight behind the blob of stone.
The Queen of Storms sighed heavily, sheathing her black blade. She pointed a finger, and a bolt of blue electricity erupted, blasting the rock to smithereens. Nate sat there, crouching, his head buried in his arms.
He blinked heavily, and looked up to see the Queen of Storms staring at him.
“Nate?” Charlie said. “By the power of Grayskull, why are you here?”
“To save you, obviously.”
“You idiot!”
“You know, I honestly expected gratitude for once. In retrospect, I had no reason to.”
“Now she’s going to kill both of us, you frozen waffle!”
“You know, I’m getting reeeaaaaalllll tired of your attitude.”
“My attitude?”
“Would it kill you to support me for once? To say ‘Hey, Nate, thanks for risking your life to come and save me?’”
“I would if I had any hope that you could, you human toaster.”
“Charlie, you’re like the human form of getting sand in your socks. I don’t even know why I bother trying to help you.”
“Oh, right, like you aren’t just doing this to impress Sam.”
“Why would you even say that, you dill weed?”
“Because, it’s a historical fact that any man who ever even tried to do anything great was just trying to impress some girl who wouldn’t give him the time of day.”
“You’re the worst.”
“Yeah, well, you’re no Taco Tuesday yourself.”
They stood, glowering at one another in silence.
“Hey, guys,” Hag said. “I just want to say: great last words.”
The Queen of Storms unleashed another jolt of electricity, blasting Nate in the chest. He convulsed and collapsed, his limbs twisted.
Charlie screamed. “Nate! Nate, are you okay?” He reared on the Queen of Storms, his face twisted in rage. “I swear, if you kill him, I will rain hellfire down upon you. You will learn the meaning of the word ‘fury’ as I rain unholy wrath upon the raw hunk of meat that used to be your body. And as you beg for mercy and death, it will be pity, not vengeance, that brings my blade to your throat!”
Even the Queen of Storms was momentarily taken aback by Charlie’s rage. She smiled. “It is a shame you must be sacrificed this day. I see much potential in you. The dark Aether would flow through those veins with tremendous strength.”
Nate stirred and coughed.
“Nate! You’re alive.”
Nate sat up, his arms and legs still tingling and sluggish. “I guess.”
“I want him alive, that he may bear witness what is coming.” The Queen of Storms walked to him. She ran her hand across Nate’s cheek. “So that he may understand.”
She returned to Charlie. Waving her hand through the air, a book appeared, its form hateful, bound in human flesh, the pages written in blood.
She began to speak the words of the ritual once more. Nate tried to stand, but his legs buckled beneath him. The air swirled, a vortex of ash and dust that expanded until they found themselves staring upward into the clear sky above them.
The sky tore and the stars fell. Nate could see into the blackness of space, the primordial time of creation. He saw as swirling mass of chaos, matter formless floating in the void. And among the matter was a being of unfathomable power. The word ‘God’ seemed inadequate to describe it. It was everything.
Its shape was vaguely human, though Nate could sense that, like the terrifying face in the mountain, this was simply his mind’s attempt to comprehend something beyond comprehension. This being was beyond such mortal considerations as time and space. Beyond reality. All the scientific understanding Nate had acquired about the universe now seemed like the quaint stories a parent would tell a child.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He saw the explosive creation of the universe. The big bang which emanated from this being. He saw stars and galaxies form from the void, clusters of light circling the corrosive power of black holes. He saw destruction and creation, chaos and order, all existed in sacred union, the push and pull of being.
His mind reeled.
“Yes,” the Queen of Storms whispered. “You are beginning to see.”
“See what?” Charlie said, confused.
“You don’t see that?” Nate said, pointing up with a trembling hand.
Charlie followed his finger, but all he could see was the night sky overhead. “The tornado? The sky? You gotta help me out.”
“Not all who look can see,” the Queen said.
The being remained at the center of existence. The universe was void of life, void of intelligence. Nate saw the being swell, its form torn in half by an explosion so potent it caused all of creation to roil and churn.
“The creation of the Luminous Aether,” The Queen of Storms whispered.
Two beings now stood at the center of creation, two halves of a whole. One, the source of light, of order, of life; the other, the void, chaos, and death.
“Behold,” the Queen of Storms said. “The birthing of Eloa and Behalah.”
Nate glanced over at her, and was shocked to see tears rolling down her cheeks. His mind faltered and threatened to crack. He clenched his eyes shut.
“Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop!”
Her chanting began to grow stronger. The dagger in her hand began to glow so bright it seared the eyes. Nate held a hand to his brow, as if attempting to block out the sun; anything to avoid staring into the yawning abyss overhead.
The Queen’s chant reached a crescendo, and the vortex froze. Everything around them froze in silence, as if time itself had been suspended.
She put her hand on Charlie’s chest. Looking at Nate, she smiled in blissful delight.
“And now, the blood of a virgin to complete the ritual. Behalah shall awake, and feast upon our world.”
She held the blade over Charlie’s chest.
Sam crouched, ready to pounce. But something held her back. It felt wrong. This wasn’t the moment to strike.
She bit her lip, unsure if she should trust the Aether, while her friend was murdered in front of her.
“No, don’t!” Nate shouted. He tried to stand, but the Queen shot another jolt of electricity from her free hand, knocking him flat, without so much as looking in his direction.
She returned her hand to Charlie’s chest, but hesitated. The sacrificial blade hovered over his heart.
“Something is wrong,” she murmured.
Nate glanced up at Charlie, who winked at him.
“Something is wrong,” she said more forcefully. “What- what have you-“
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charlie said, grinning.
She placed the palm of her hand over his eyes, and bent her head in concentration. She jumped back from Charlie in horror, the glowing dagger clattered heavily to the ground. The blue light sputtered and died.
“You-” she spoke in a panic. “It cannot be. You are not a virgin?”
“Well, that really backfired on you, didn’t it?” Charlie laughed despite his vulnerable position, naked and chained to the altar as he was.
“What?” Nate said, equally shocked.
Charlie grinned at him.
“Who? When? How?”
Charlie shrugged coyly.
“Gri?”
“We were married a few months ago.”
“What?” Nate shouted louder.
“While we were traveling to the Oracle of Horthax.”
“It cannot be-” The Queen stammered.
“Nice!” Nate said, holding his hand up in a feeble attempt to give Charlie a high-five despite his chains and the considerable distance between them. “I can’t believe you didn’t invite me.”
“It was a small ceremony, just the two of us. Vows were exchanged. She gave me her tribal necklace. It was quite lovely.”
“Does that make you a king now?”
“Huh, yeah, I guess it does. I hadn’t really thought of that.”
“Sam and I kissed.”
“Finally! How was it?”
“Probably the best moment of my life.”
“That’s not really saying much, though, is it?”
“THIS CANNOT BE!” the Queen of Storms shrieked. She drew the black blade from its sheath. The air filled with her oppressive power. Her hair swirled and crackled with electricity as her rage washed over them.
“And you would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for us pesky kids,” Charlie smirked.
She swung the blade down twice, severing the chains that bound Charlie’s feet and hands. She unleashed a furious blast of electricity that sent him tumbling off the altar.
She stalked over to Nate, and grabbed him be the neck, lifting him off the ground. He kicked and punched at her weakly as she carried him over to the altar and slammed him down on his back. Nate struggled until she brought the black pummel of the Heart of Trees down onto his forehead.
Dazed, Nate could barely move. He heard Charlie cough and groan somewhere behind him. His eyes struggled to focus, lights danced at the periphery of his vision as she stabbed the black sword into the platform. One hand on his throat, she held the other out and summoned the ceremonial dagger.
In her grasp, it glowed once again.
“He may not be a virgin,” she growled. “But you are. The Conclave had plans for you. I had hoped that one who could unify with the Aether could be brought to see the truth. But-” she held the sacrificial blade aloft. “The ritual must be completed.”
The dagger slipped from her hand, and fell heavily to the ground once more. She stared down in confused horror at the tip of Sam’s spear which protruded from her chest.
“You stay the hell away from my boyfriend,” Sam whispered in her ear.
The Queen of Storms stared down in shock, her body convulsed. She tried to speak, but only blood poured from her mouth. Sam yanked her spear free, and the Queen toppled. She gasped and coughed, making a wheezing, animalistic cry as her lungs collapsed.
“Well, crap,” Nate said, sitting up on the alter. “I wonder why we didn’t think to do that nine months ago.”
The Queen clawed at the platform, crawling desperately away from them, leaving a trail of blood. Charlie appeared from behind the altar, shaky on his legs, his hands covering his privates.
“Did you hear?” he said, beaming at Sam.
“Yes.”
“I had sex.”
“I said I heard.”
“More than once, probably.”
“Don’t be gross.”
“At least cover your shame,” Nate said, offering him his shirt, which Charlie wrapped around his waist.
Charlie walked over to the Heart of Trees, still stuck in the platform like Excalibur. He grasped the pommel.
“Uh… Charlie?” Sam said. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Charlie shrugged, and yanked the weapon free. He held the broken, black blade aloft, swinging it a few times to test its weight and balance. “It’s just a sword, right? It didn’t corrupt her, she was already evil.”
The Queen of Storms had collapsed onto her back, blood spurting rhythmically from her chest. A dark pool had collected beneath her.
“She died how she lived,” Hag said solemnly. “Bleeding out of her boobies.”
Charlie stood over her, the black blade in his hand. “I’m afraid, my dear Queen of Storms, that you’ve dungeoned your last dragon.”
He swung, freeing her head from her body. He then punted it off the edge of the platform. It rolled into the dark haze, sounding a bit like a coconut bouncing heavily down some stairs.
Nate grimaced. “Geez, Charlie. That was… a bit excessive maybe?”
Charlie unbuckled the sword’s sheath from her body. “Maybe. You never know, right? Like, what if her head re-attached or something.”
“I’m just glad she’s dead,” Sam said, poking the corpse with her toe. “We should probably burn the body or something.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Nate said.
“Well, shoot,” Charlie muttered. “Now I wish I hadn’t kicked her head. Did you guys see where it went?”
#
After burning the Queen of Storm’s body and scattering the ashes to the wind, they returned to Yonate. The battle was over; the armies of darkness had fled into the wilderness. Captain Stormbow and her generals had been at a loss to explain why the orc and goblin hoard, on the precipice of victory, had retreated.
After hearing their story, and of the death of the Queen of Storms, their withdrawal made a kind of sense. Hundreds of thousands lay dead in great heaps on the plains of Stonegarde. Carrion birds feasted, and the stench was sickening. They would be burying their dead for months.
“And you have the black blade with you?” Alianna asked. Charlie nodded, holding out the sheathed weapon. She reached for it, but hesitated, before pushing the weapon back toward Charlie.
“I think it best you bear this burden, until we can return the blade to the Quorum of Trees. I would not risk falling to the same dark path as Uvesh.”
Gri, covered in countless bruises and cuts, tackled Charlie with such enthusiasm there was concern for his safety. They kissed passionately, and Nate and Sam both looked away, deeply uncomfortable with what they were witnessing.
Sam quickly turned and shook hands with a random knight.
“Oh, hello! What were you saying?” she said.
“What?”
“Earlier, you were saying something.”
The knight seemed incredibly confused. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
Sam laughed enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah, for sure. How are you doing?”
Nate watched her, smiling. They hadn’t spoken of the kiss. But there was an electricity between them. His stomach danced each time he saw her.
“I don’t understand,” Hag said. “Why is Charlie kissing Gri gross to me?”
“I don’t know,” Nate said. “Why is water wet?”
“Also, since you kissed Sam, I think we should have a talk about the birds and the bees.”
“I’m an adult now, Hag.”
“Yeah, but how many times have you kissed a girl?”
Nate thought for a moment. “Okay, that’s a fair point. Proceed.”
The celebration of their victory lasted several weeks in Yonate, the City of Rings. Feasts were held in their honor. They were given countless accolades, honorifics, titles, and lands from each of the Ten Kingdoms. Each of the Kings were now trying to court their favor, attempting to out-do the other with the lavish gifts they bestowed upon them.
They were deeply uncomfortable with the attention. They were relieved when Alianna finally told them they would be returning to Whitespire, to make their journey to the Quorum of Trees. They traveled at a leisurely pace.
They were quite surprised to find themselves enjoying the trek home.
“I guess this place is pretty cool, when you aren’t being hunted and attacked constantly,” Nate remarked one evening as they sat under the stars. They had camped on a rocky plateau that overlooked the flat plain of the Vale of Giants. Enormous mushrooms walked across incandescent grasses that glowed neon pinks and blues in the crisp night air.
Nate had wanted to speak to Sam privately about what had happened between them, but always seemed to be interrupted by Charlie, or Hag, or Alianna.
Of course, he was also terrified of having any sort of actual conversation with her. What if she said the kiss was a mistake? What if she just wanted to remain friends?
They arrived in Whitespire on a cool, fall evening. The trees were painted flaming orange and crimson. Children ran and played, collecting fruits and nuts for the coming winter.
“How long have we been here?” Nate struggled to remember. Without the constant reminder of calendars and clocks, time became more abstract, measured in changing landscapes instead of days.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Feels like about a year, maybe?”
“Seasons must be all wacky here,” Nate said. “We arrived kind of in the spring, right? Maybe?”
Charlie shrugged.
“And now, like a year later, it’s just turning to fall?”
“I guess. Does it matter?”
“Not really. A year of winter will suck though.”
“Nate, we’re from Minnesota. That sounds exactly normal to me.”
Captain Stormbow chartered a ship and they embarked the next day. The journey was somber, with the noticeable absence of Doctor Professor as they sailed to the Isle of the Sacred Wood.
Their ship dropped anchor south of the coast. Hag refused to join them on the smaller vessel they rowed to shore.
“If I go back, they’ll never let me leave again,” he insisted. He remained behind to annoy the sailors. Charlie half-wondered if they wouldn’t simply squash Hag in their absence. But he had been celebrated as one of the heroes of the Battle of Stonegarde. He was probably safe.
They returned to the sacred grove, removing their shoes as they once more stood on the smooth, white stone in front of the Quorum of Trees. The intense emotions they had felt the first time, of peace and calm, were only amplified now. Nate could feel the Aether in his bones. It made his entire being tremble.
“We have come here as pilgrims, seekers of truth, and servants of the Luminous Aether,” Alianna said. “These three, sent by a fallen star, have completed the prophecy, and put an end to the wicked schemes of the Queen of Storms. The Conclave of Flame and Salt has been thwarted. Peace once again reigns in our lands.”
She was met with silence.
“We are returning to you, the Quorum of the Trees, that which was stolen. The Heart of Trees. The black blade forged from the Tree of Knowledge. Please accept this gift, given with humility and gratitude.”
She nodded to Charlie, who approached the knotted, gnarled tree with empty clasped hands. Sam’s eyes lingered on the shining white spear, the Soul of Trees.
He pressed the weapon to the enormous, crooked hands, which - to his surprised - opened, grasping the blade.
They heard a loud popping sound. Alianna gasped. The eyes of one of the trees had opened. They glowed a brilliant white.
The leaves and branches overhead shook as it grunted and groaned, slowly stretching its stiff, wooden limbs that creaked and chirred. Alianna fell to her knees, her head bowed in reverence. The other trees stirred, groaning and sighing as they awoke from their prolonged slumber.
“What is this, then?” the ancient tree spoke, his voice like a dried reed bending in the wind. “Why have you returned our gift?”
“Gift?” Alianna said. “The Heart of Trees was stolen. We seek to right the wrong that-”
“Stolen?” The tree cut her off. “Tell us, where is Uvesh?”
“Dead,” Sam said. “We killed her.”
Several of the trees let loose a mournful cry.
“Dead?” the ancient tree said. “But why would you kill her?”
“Because she stole the blade from you,” Alianna said, ire edging into her voice. “The blade corrupted her.”
“Corrupted her?” the tree shook his enormous head. “No, no, my child. The blade is but a weapon. She was tasked with restoring balance to the Aether.”
“She was-” Alianna stammered as she stood. “Tasked? By whom?”
“By the Quorum of Trees, of course.”
“I don’t understand,” Alianna said, stepping back in horror as the other trees shook and swayed.
“We have failed,” one of the other trees groaned. “The scales have tipped further. It may be too late.”
The ancient tree sniffed the air. “Yes, I can feel it too. Calamity! Misfortune! Woe to us all!”
“But we have only sought to serve the Luminous Aether,” Alianna shouted. “Uvesh would have brought ruin to our world.”
“No, Alianna Stormbow, Child of Kadmon,” the ancient tree answered. “There must always be a balance between the day and the night.” It stretched its massive head upward toward the sky above them. “The sun provides warmth, feeds the plants, and gives life to our world. But too much sunlight would bring catastrophe and suffering. The waters would recede, the earth would become arid and barren. All would fall to ruin.”
“But-” Alianna stuttered. “But, you worship the light Aether.”
“No, we serve the Aether in all its aspects. For only when there is balance, can the world exists, and life thrive. Eloa and Behalah are two and one. Separate and the same.”
“I told you!” Charlie whispered victoriously to Nate and Sam. “The Jedi always said they sought balance with the Force, but then murdered the Sith. Never made a lick of sense.”
Alianna stood mute. “I- this cannot be.”
An expression of such sorrow passed over the tree’s face that a knot welled up in Nate’s throat.
“This was why the Quorum slumbered. The Soldiers of the Sun would not listen. They thought themselves wise, for they were learned. They closed their ears and minds and hearts.”
“Please,” the creature plead with Captain Stormbow. “Please, understand, this is how it must be. Balance must be restored.”
“You have betrayed us,” Alianna said softly, her face a mask of barely-controlled rage. She stalked over to her boots, yanked them on, and departed in a cloud of anger.
The tree shook his head sadly. “For though they see, they are blind. And though they hear, they are deaf.”
It turned back to the three friends, who stood nervously together, feeling altogether small.
“But you three,” the tree stooped low, examining them. The other trees touched their faces and arms, grasping their clothing, examining them. “Yes, three pilgrims from another world. Tell us, what do you desire?”
Nate glanced at his friends.
“It’s your call, man,” Charlie said.
Sam nodded in agreement.
Nate licked his lips. “Could- could you send us home?”
The trees released them, and swayed gently, though there was no wind.
“Oh, yes, we could indeed. The veil between worlds is difficult to pierce, but not impossible.”
It leaned forward, its enormous face mere feet from Nate.
“If that is what you truly desire. You were brought here against your will, you owe this world nothing.”
Nate again glanced nervously at his friends.
Charlie smiled sadly.
Sam avoided his gaze.
“I think,” Nate said, his mouth suddenly dry. “I think I’d like to stay and try to help.”
Sam hugged him so violently he nearly collapsed.
“Good call, man,” Charlie said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Really? You’re not, mad or something? You guys don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
Charlie shrugged. “And what, go home and play everyone’s favorite game: ‘let’s watch my mom sober up before she has to go to her nursing job?’ Hard pass.”
“You really want to stay?” he asked Sam, who beamed up at him. “Here? With me?”
She nuzzled into his neck. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
“If that is your decision,” the ancient tree said. “Then the task falls to you. You must restore the balance to the Aether. Help Captain Stormbow see reason, before it is too late.”
There was another loud creaking sound. The tree holding the Heart of Trees tugged on Charlie’s sleeve, and returned to him the black blade.
“Really?” he said quietly. “Are you sure?”
The tree nodded, smiling warmly as it rubbed its enormous hands together.
The tree across from it held out the Soul of Trees, the white spear. Nate stepped forward to take it, but the tree scowled, and pulled it back.
It pointed to Sam.
“This tree is probably the smartest tree we’ve ever met,” she said as she took the spear. It hummed with a power. A white light coursed up through her arm and into her chest, jolting her entire body.
“Wow!” she gasped.
“I, uh…” Nate hesitated. “What about me? Do I get a gift?”
The ancient tree smiled at him. “You have already been given a gift. The gift of knowledge, bestowed upon you by Uvesh.”
“Oh, sure. That’s… that’s pretty cool, I guess.” He tried to hide his disappointment. “A sword would have been awesome. But no, knowledge, that’s… that’s great.”
The ancient tree reared to its full height, its body creaking and rattling as it stretched toward the heavens. “The task we have set before you is not an easy one. I foresee much sorrow and blood. But this world stands upon the edge of a blade, and upon you rests the fate of us all.”
“Awesome,” Nate said, glancing at his friends. “No pressure, right?”
Charlie gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Sam sighed. “Our inspiring leader, everybody.”