Goblin Haze, Druid Rage
Chapter 2: Relieve
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The Blessed Tree was the centerpiece of the Tanglesooth village. Its massive trunk was hollowed out, a network of carved tunnels going through its wooden body to connect to various facilities and safety shelters. High up on its branches were platforms and fortifications, meant for archers and casters to fight — which many goblins and trolls had begun doing, with pyromancers coming close enough to the living tree to be within attacking range.
This was their sanctuary when the Tanglesooth were under attack, and on other days, their home of origin, where all druids of their order had entwined their fates and magic with the Dryad’s. The Blessed Tree exuded peace and tranquility — it was a sacred place respected by all. A place that demanded poise and dignity, where all spoke with utmost serenity.
It was supposed to be so, anyway.
“Move!” Emrys commanded two goblins guarding the entrance, the pair all but leaping out of his way as he barreled past. Another time, it would’ve been an act of no small disrespect — but considering Seekit was darting beside him with an equally frantic pace, he was pretty sure nobody would mind. Gran certainly would let him off the hook.
If he could fix whatever Aodh did to Gran, that was.
You must see for yourself. Seekit’s impassive voice came off as strained, Emrys practically feeling the loyal faunimal’s stress over her bonded friend’s state. Through large phloem-carved passages they traveled, Seekit leading the way. Lady Birog suffers from taint. She acts violently and with warped reason—
“So I’ve been told,” Emrys snapped, the rough texture of the floor scraping his bare feet. “Is she fine? What did Aodh do exactly? Is it affecting you too?”
I suppressed our link. A strange snarl echoed through her mind-voice, Seekit’s muzzle shifting as if it’d rip open into an actual mouth to vocalize the sound. The silence maddens me nearly as much as Aodh’s corrupted magic does. Pester me further and I may give in altogether.
Corrupted magic. Madness. Emrys gritted his teeth.
There was a series of mazelike pathways to the Dryad’s chambers at the heartwood portion of the Blessed Tree’s trunk, the most central part. Grandma Birog, the Dryad’s Communer and her first line of defense, often kept watch at its entrance, though right now she would’ve been making rounds to each of the shelters to check on their circumstances. Her status was practically on par with the chieftain’s by nature of her role — for Aodh to attack her was an act of war on its own. To breach the Dryad’s home thereafter—
Why? Why would you ever act like this, Aodh?
Emrys had vaguely known the warrior. He was a somewhat stubborn person at times, and a little dense in the head too, but good-natured and loyal as well. A goblin and a druid who had taken his duty in ensuring the safety of their order with full diligence and devotion. Him turning his back like this, it was so unlike him. There must be an explanation to all this, an overly logical part of his head said.
He attacked Gran! the emotional part yelled back. He’s violating the Dryad’s privacy! What explanation is there?
Aodh wouldn’t betray us, not in his right mind. He fought the Kindlefury, remember? He might have had remnants of their own magic upon him.
Which should’ve worn off by this point, or our healers should’ve taken care of! And their powers can’t change one’s magic anyway!
Him having corrupted magic doesn’t mean he intentionally learned to wield such—
He just betrayed us! He attacked Gran! Gran!
A wordless yell grabbed Emrys’s attention, its aged yet sharp tone making his heart skip a beat. His inner voices of logic and emotion fused.
Gran.
Fear and love gave him wings. Emrys dashed past Seekit, turned a corner, and found Grandma Birog in the middle of the halls. Not far from the corridor that served as the gateway into the mazelike parts of the Blessed Tree, and the Dryad’s abode.
Roots tied her up, the work of another goblin whose white-knuckled hands gripped her staff like a weapon — wielded by someone who clearly wasn’t acquainted with fighting with it. A sickly purplish-red haze billowed from Gran’s dark green skin, the stocky old goblin shifting her crazed, fiery eyes toward a stock-still Emrys. Her writhing ceased for a moment.
Then Seekit caught up, and Gran gnashed her teeth at her arrival. “You! YOU!”
The haze solidified into spiked, monstrous vine tendrils, lashing out toward Seekit. The goblin holding Gran scrambled back, and Emrys gasped as he called upon his own root magic—
But no need. Floating rocks crashed into the base of the tendrils and ripped them apart, Emrys turning to notice a troll too was amongst their group. His black robes and hairy figure belied his youth — he was possibly just a few years older than him, Emrys sensed. On the shorter side too, being not much taller than human men, though Emrys still barely reached his chest.
Two staffs were in his grasp. A gray staff of the Cragfall order, glowing with energy and with a plethora of jagged rocks of several sizes circling overhead, ready to strike if needed. And a decorated staff with vinelike patterns engraved on it.
Gran’s.
Gran hissed at the troll, then at the goblin woman as she hastily conjured more roots, restraining her until she was practically cocooned in them. “Treason! All of you, working with that slime Aodh and restraining me here!” she spat, before giving Emrys the stink eye. “Even you, idiot boy! My ingrate of a servant girl bewitched you too, didn’t she? After everything I’ve done for you both!”
It dug a pit in Emrys stomach, hearing Gran’s abnormal hostility — the small lacing of tenderness in her otherwise gruff voice was absent, with only vitriol left in its wake. Seekit too stiffened at the barbed words, the faunimal hovering a safe distance away from her. Perhaps out of wariness of the purplish-red haze oozing out of Gran and what it could do.
Or Gran herself.
The troll nodded to Emrys in a show of deference. “This would be her grandson, mistress spirit?” he asked Seekit. “I am Golmac, friend Emrys, and I’m told we will need your skills. Mabel here has restrained your grandmother, but her healing touch does nothing against Kindlefury magic, I’m afraid.”
“It’s not Kindlefury magic.” The words tumbled out of Emrys’s mouth before he could process them. He shook his head, approaching Gran with caution. “It’s similar, but it shouldn’t be like this.”
Kindlefury magic was meant to empower oneself, after all, channeling rage into physical strength. The Kindlefury Druids were terrifying warriors bound to the Berserker, their spells able to infuse themselves with destructive, fiery abilities borne out of their anger. They also could mess with the minds of their enemies, making them fall into a blind rage and turn against each other without knowing. But the affliction Gran had wasn’t quite the same.
Gran shouldn’t be empowered herself by Aodh’s magic. And she shouldn’t have enough coherency to speak.
Emrys raised his staff, and Grandma Birog hissed, thrashing against her restraints. “I’ll have all your heads for this!” yelled Gran. “Especially you, spirit! Craven coward, turning even my grandson against me! Prying away my staff from me!”
Mabel fumbled with her staff as a few bulges appeared in the roots holding her, bursting open to reveal yet more purplish-red vines of haze. Golmac tilted his staff in response, his rocks darting forward and ripping them apart. Emrys paled and ducked as one vine struck toward him, Golmac’s rocks skewering it a half-second before it could turn to puncture his back. “Your brethren will remember she who murdered the Tanglesooth!” Gran spat at Seekit. “Open the link, you dumb servant girl, so I can give you the lashing you deserve!”
Seekit’s eyelids flickered, her head twitching. Please hurry.
Please wasn’t a phrase Seekit would use toward Emrys. Or anyone really. Overly personal stakes could do strange things to people.
Or the prospect of calamity marching upon our doorstep. With another possible calamity slinking its way into the deepest parts of the Blessed Tree too.
Emrys grunted, his staff glowing with a mist of a light jade hue. Seekit had brought him for reasons beyond familial relationships. He was no healer, and his root magic wasn’t anything too impressive. But soothing the mind? That was his specialty.
He focused on Gran, and the mist billowed toward her, Gran choking as it lashed at the miasma leaking out of her. Emrys couldn’t help but make a face — he could feel the way Aodh had messed with her mind, the manic aggression that addled her.
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He had been used to soothing the lingering effects of the magic the Kindlefury wielded. Their magic was like a branding fire, burning you into submission. This form of magic, however? It was subtler and more polluted, a disease that rooted itself deep into one’s core and twisted the way they were meant to think.
Small wonder she’s acting the way she is.
Extracting the disease with his magic proved rather difficult. Emrys pressed his magic onward, chipping away at the gunk of poisonous hatred that clogged the channels of Gran’s mind, one piece at a time. “Surely you could’ve sent for another purifier druid,” he muttered to Seekit.
Few Tanglesooth share your talent, and they serve more critical roles in fighting off the humans. You know this.
The haze began to abate against his purity mist. Gran struggled the hardest she ever had, a small fury of hazy vines trying to rip themselves out of her cocoon. Golmac crushed and shredded them, and Mabel conjured yet more roots to patch the holes. Gran fired a loathing look at both, then at Emrys, estrangement twisting her features.
“Imbecile boy!” she said, her voice cracking. “This is how you repay me? How you repay your parents?”
Emrys pressed his lips and pushed harder. His eyes threatened to water.
“He’s down there, that cur Aodh! And you’re conspiring with him, you filthy backstabbers! Curse you! Curse the Dryad — even she cuts herself off from my communications! Ingrates, every last one of you—”
Emrys pushed hard, finding weakness in the taint, and the gunk collapsed. Gran recoiled as if physically struck, the purplish-red haze dissipating. Seekit shook with a start, as if finally free of a vicegrip that’d been chafing her neck the whole time.
Lady Birog?
Gran’s eyes blinked, swerving around at the faces observing her, then at her unfamiliar surroundings. A bothered grumble left her. “I was supposed to be heading toward the western shelter,” she said. “Curse you, Aodh. You can release me, Mabel, I’m myself again.”
Mabel bit her lip, but an assertive nod from Seekit made the goblin woman heed the command. One moment later and the vines had retreated into seemingly nowhere, Gran pulling herself up at once. “Gran,” breathed Emrys, stepping close to her. “Are you fine?”
Gran snorted, before showing the back of her head toward Emrys. A dried purplish-red ooze lightly dyed it. “The liar had been sneaking around, staff in hand, and I stopped him. Confiscated his staff and gave it to Seekit, then told him to explain his sudden lack of illness. Turns out the fungus-blighted trickster’s far better than I thought at casting spells without a tool to focus his magic with — gave me quite the surprise.”
“You yourself were much more formidable than I expected, wise Fluxus Communer,” muttered Golmac.
“The Dryad, troll, we call her the Dryad. My staff?”
Golmac handed the staff over, Gran gripping it with a tight hand. “I believe Aodh’s touch made me say things I shouldn’t have,” she said, tsking when Emrys and Seekit averted their gazes. “Probably acted out in ways I shouldn’t have either. Must be a good thing my grandson’s not a complete failure at treating such hexes.”
It was a jab of sorts — but a light jab filled with praise and quiet affection, Emrys sighing in relief at its familiarity. He didn’t retrieve his staff back, Lady Birog, commented Seekit. I kept it away, and you were too violent to deal with, so he opted to run off toward the Dryad’s chambers.
Gran scoffed. “Cowardice. How violent was I, dear Seekit?”
You struck me a few times when I urged you to stay put.
“Bah, of course I did. Aodh feigning sickness, only to play us like idiots at this dark hour! I won’t let him take me for a fool again. Seekit, you’ve done well by gathering these people to keep me in check, but I fear we may need more than us to handle this dire situation.”
Out of the cooking pot and into the metaphorical fire. Gran was well, thank goodness, but with her condition resolved, Emrys found himself confronted with the true danger at hand. The bleak, burning abyss that threatened to raze their home at its very roots.
Aodh’s headed for the Dryad. With rage-inducing sorcery.
Mabel audibly gulped. “I-I’m sorry, u-us?” she spoke in a small voice. “I don’t t-think—”
“Oh hush, girl, obviously not a bundle of nerves like you. Pray for our sakes and keep tending to the shelters — and keep your pretty lips quiet about Aodh causing trouble.” Gran flicked a hand. “Well? Go on! Shoo!”
The goblin didn’t hesitate a second longer, scrambling to her feet and hurrying back down the halls. Birog turned upon the others, expectant.
Emrys didn’t need to be told twice. “I am yours, Gran,” he declared.
“As am I,” the troll said, a gray palm over his robed chest. “Call me Golmac, Dryad Communer. I had been injured while guarding the first boulder ring, and your healers had just released me when your spirit partner stumbled upon me, asking that I help Mabel suppress you.”
“Good that she did. I am Birog, young Golmac.” Gran shook her head. “The Dryad’s smothered her link to me, even more than Seekit did — I cannot reach her at all, but at least she already knows of Aodh’s advance. She must’ve sealed the passages down to her innermost sanctuary by now. I question if she can defend herself for long, however.”
She gave Seekit an inquiring look, to which she responded with a huff. We’re tight on druids to stop the humans’ siege. Pulling any out to handle Aodh seems unwise.
“Hm. Numbers won’t help much anyway, Aodh’s newfound magic would turn them against us. And I’m not interested in letting word of Aodh’s treachery demoralize the druids. A few faunimals, however, would be an asset—”
Seekit bristled. They hardly care for the pleadings of a servant girl.
“They will care, because this is life and death. Try, Seekit, try.”
Bitter distress made Gran’s gaze tremble. Emrys clasped her shoulder, Gran letting him hold her steady for a moment. A moment that could’ve been spent chasing after Aodh, but instead spent on something just as valuable, if not more so.
On steeling themselves for what lay ahead.
Seekit inclined her head. For she who cared for me when my brethren did not, I will try.
“Be quick, dear.”
I shall, Lady Birog.
Off she darted, twice as quickly as when she arrived with Emrys. Gran wasted no further time, moving toward the entranceway to the Dryad’s chambers. Emrys followed suit, Golmac lumbering behind at a pace that easily matched his, what with his larger stature. Away from the fires of their downfall they marched, and toward the poison that would fell their tree.
“Pardon me.” Golmac’s voice made Emrys tilt his head, Gran slowing only the slightest bit to indicate she too was listening. “Being not of your druid order, I fear I might not understand the full danger of this situation. This Aodh, was he a lawless person?”
Lawless. Ha. Far from it. “It is extremely unlike him,” Gran stated. “He was one of our nobler warriors. I still cannot fathom what prompted him to learn a form of magic similar to the Kindlefury’s Berserker in secret, or why he takes such an abominably stupid action.”
They reached a living wood hallway of a darker shade than the rest of the carved-out tree. Vines covered its walls like a tapestry of muddled patterns and designs, and leaves and roots were etched into the floor. At the end stood a large double-door covered in even more vines.
Said door was bashed in, wood splintered apart to create a tear in between the locked doors. The vines surrounding the hole in the door were wilting, a purplish-red poison having eaten away their tips, much to Emrys’s revulsion. Gran’s expression was worse still, the silent rage she held almost an uncanny sister to her addled state while under Aodh’s toxic influence.
“However.” She raised a gnarled finger. “Whatever Aodh is doing, he wields magic much like the Kindlefury’s, only twisted into a mold of his own shaping. And he dares to approach a Fluxus with that power.”
The Dryad. The source of the Tanglesooth’s magic. Golmac fingered his heart, while Emrys gave out a pained groan. He looked at his staff, felt the power of the Dryad’s purification using it as his medium, and feared what would happen if that purity were to be twisted.
“It’s what I think it is, isn’t it? Gran?” he asked.
“Think not, boy, and know it instead.” Gran strode toward the hole. “If the Dryad goes mad from Aodh’s tampering, it’ll corrupt the magic we channel from her. The Tanglesooth will fall into chaos, and the humans will overrun us all.”
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Aodh huffed, his cloak hung tightly around him as he hurried through the Dryad’s maze. Transparent, purplish-red armor overlaid his cloak, complete with vine-like tendrils that slithered out of his back — a fusion of his native Tanglesooth magic with what he’d taken from the Kindlefury.
Greenery, hanging vines, and glowing moss met him anywhere he looked, covering the dark heartwood that made up the maze’s walls. Too many troublesome dead ends as well. The rage within him seethed, his tendrils snapping at nearby vines to make them wither at their ooze-like touch.
It took effort to push that rage away, Aodh forcing his tendrils to behave themselves. Not now. The rage mustn’t take him.
Not enough things had gone to plan. It was just supposed to be a simple sneak-in! Go to the Dryad’s chambers while Communer Birog wasn’t around, reach the Dryad, and then have a polite and civil discussion on why he had just invaded her personal privacy in the middle of a war doomed to kill his people. Then he would make a proposal she would surely balk at, yet knew she needed to accept—
But no. He had to mess that up and walk right into Birog. And then he had to panic and let emotional thinking get the better of him. Now he was missing his staff, and he had unnecessarily harmed the Communer.
The Dryad’s general domain sense could overlook a lot of things. Intoxicating her Communer with rage miasma, however? There was absolutely no way the Fluxus guardian of the Tanglesooth would ignore such an act. She knew an intruder was coming.
Aodh couldn’t help but scowl as he found himself confronted by a wall of conjured, tightly woven roots blocking off a pathway. He slowly approached, then leapt back when a series of roots jerked out of the earth to grab him. The Dryad was fighting him.
She’s wasting time on me instead of the actual threat.
He had done a grave thing to Birog, and he was paying the price. Anger bubbled within Aodh — anger at himself for having failed this much, when everything rested on his shoulders. For having relied on such deception, only for it to amount to nothing. His tendrils howled at the thought, snapping at everything around them.
It couldn’t be this way. No, this had to work! He had to salvage this. He would not accept this outcome! He had to, needed to—
Breathe.
And so Aodh breathed, taking hold of his inner anger. He clasped the magic he’d trained so long to figure out, the stolen energy he held within him, and turned his anger into resolve. His tendrils stilled, before winding up, poised like snakes charmed to serve at his command.
He ordered, and they lashed with precision, systematically lashing out at the roots converging on him. They all burned and crumbled at the acidic touch, Aodh breaking them apart with crushing strikes. He threw himself at the root barrier blocking his path, hacking it apart until a hole drenched in purplish-red ooze had been burnt through.
The obvious dead end at the other end ticked him off. Nearly did the rage consume him. Aodh shoved it back down.
Distractions. Curse you, Aodh. Everyone will die, and it’s your fault.
A stray thought told him to turn back. To plead with Birog — but no, she wouldn’t listen to his reasoning now. Surely her spirit helper, Seekit, would have gotten her someone to soothe her mind, and she’d be planning to storm the maze after him.
There was only one way left now. He needed to reach the Dryad. Immediately. And he’d tear down this entire forsaken maze to do so.
It’s the only way forward.
He rushed down another corridor and prayed.