Multiple scenarios ran through Tristan’s head. Fortunately, he already knew what was breaking in. The only creature besides himself that was capable of opening the door was the ent. He could fight the creature in here, it was a fortress, and using the narrow hallways and choke points to remove the plant's support might be prudent.

He would have nowhere to retreat, and he could not out-maneuver the ent to escape. Stepping into the office outside the vault, he inspected the side entrance. It was made so that guards would not have to walk through a pathway full of traps. Tristan had not explored it yet and had no idea where the passage went. One thing was sure, If people used it, then he could too.

Exit marked out, Tristan decided to take advantage of the fortress that Deep Cradle had kindly built for him. Going upstairs, he moved to a control panel of sorts. No forces were present in it, but there was a row of hand cranked winches with a wheel painted half red and half green just above each.

Tristan would have had no idea what these were for if he had lacked his metal sense. It was an ability that he was starting to think was his most potent skill, as it allowed him to quickly gain information on unfamiliar constructs. In this case, he could see the hand cranks attached to a set of gears below the floor. The gears were attached to sets of springs and latches for the traps in the hallway.

A small tug and a click later, the red half of the wheel spun to face upward. The swinging blades were now armed. Another twist and the garrote wires were pulled back like drawn bow strings. They were now barely visible, and were ready to snap forward. Tristan was glad that this fort had been abandoned, as he could manually trigger any of these traps.

Seeing a metal chord only helped if someone did not flip a switch to whip it at him at six hundred feet a second. There were other things he had completely missed, they weren’t made of metal and were currently disarmed. The wooden door was one of five, and the hallway was designed to be flooded with oil and incinerated if the traps failed.

Unfortunately, the oil level was dramatically decreased. Tristan was disappointed, as a fire filled hallway was the perfect answer to the ent. The scribe and his coworkers needed a fuel source to cook and light the darkness, so the giant pool of oil would have made an irresistible resource. No oil did not mean that Tristan lacked anything to burn.

So, while the spriggons and ent searched the two office spaces, Tristan started pulling apart crates and throwing the wooden planks down into the trap hall. He gathered the three minerals that Vulcan had told him not to touch, maybe they would be just as bad for plants as they were for people.

“Why are you staying to fight?” Vulcan asked, “Just leave with your spoils and don’t risk it.”

Tristan paused in tearing another board off a crate full of jade bricks, “These things are evil. They killed millions of people, they need to die,” Vulcan sent an image of his mother with a raised eyebrow and folded arms. Tristan sighed, “And I kind of want to fight an ent.”

“So you’re being an idiot, got it,” Vulcan muttered.

That was not up for debate. He had enough examples of insane choices, he had hugged The Lord of the Underworld in that final conflict. His deconstruction of the crate was interrupted when something pushed the front door open. There had been an alert system that was quite ingenious. The top of the door would brush against a few wires when the alarm was set and play a short tune. They could have just made the hinges squeaky, but Tristan had to admit he liked the little tune better.

Rushing up the stairs, Tristan looked down through the bars and into the hallway. He was disappointed to see a spriggon. They were numerous and could overwhelm any traps he set with numbers. Still, it was an intruder and he would get rid of it. Grabbing a long spear off the rack, he coated the tip with decay and jabbed down at the plant monster.

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It looked up at the noise, just in time to get a spear to the face. Unfortunately, nothing vital was stored there, and the spear had been made for flesh, not wood. The spriggon staggered back at the sudden assault but was unable to get the spear out of its head. Tristan jerked back and pulled the spriggon off the floor by its face.

The decay coating had allowed the razor-sharp and barbed head of the spear to twist inside the puncture sight. There was not enough decay to rot the whole head off, so Tristan could only sigh as he abandoned that spear. Picking up a second, he used his decay alloy a second time before stabbing the spriggon in the chest.

That was when it started screaming. He was not sure what they kept at their core, but it was important for their survival. He could hear the patter of dozens of footsteps as they were drawn in by the scream and the thumps of something much more solid. That must be the ent, Tristan thought and grinned as he kicked the box with uranium into the entryway.

Vulcan had mentioned that the metal had a slow acting poison that it emitted. It slowly made everything around it poisonous as well, Tristan hoped a chain reaction of this radiation poisoning would do some harm to the creatures who would be crammed into the hallway. The spriggon stopped screaming as something vital in its chest was destroyed.

Tristan paused for a moment. There was something vital in their chest. Chopping weapons might work if he cut into the spriggon’s sternum. Maybe that weakness carried over to the ents. There was a boom that sounded suspiciously like a wall collapsing, and then the heavy thuds restarted. Yeah, it might be a bit arrogant to think he could chop through anything with that kind of mass.

Releasing the spear, Tristan let the spriggon fall to the floor. Its body was made of damp wood, making it poor fuel, however, Vulcan was no longer running on fumes. A gravity blast might be a bit of a stretch, but turning the hallway into an oven for thirty seconds was possible.

The second spriggon rushed in heedless of the body lying on the floor. Tristan used another spear to stab it in the chest. He only had thirty spears, but thirty bodies could well and truly clog this hallway. The spriggon started screaming and thrashing. A third spriggon arrived shortly after.

Instead of assisting its comrade, it grabbed the other plant monster and used the body like a shield. The lack of empathy for its own race was surprising. The haft of the spear was long, still wedged between the bars. Three steps in the spear wedged itself at a bad angle, jerking the spriggon to a stop.

“This is why we help our friends!” Tristan shouted as he stabbed the off balance creature in the back.

The spriggon’s answer was not the standard scream, “AAAbove!”

The entire building shuddered. Tristan braced for the wall to buckle. Then he remembered that it was a force imbued structure. Something likely built to the standard of the tier eight high chancellor. Another two impacts shook the wall, loosening some dust from the roof. Something muttered a curse in an unknown language.

“I didn’t know a tree could do that,” Vulcan commented understanding the foreign tongue.

“Do what?” Tristan said preparing for the worst. Maybe it had a fire affinity or something else that was impossible for trees.

Vulcan seemed uncertain of how to explain, “Uh, when an unsavory man meets a pretty girl and they, um…”

“Enough said,” Tristan cut him off.

A large set of claws wrapped around the door frame. Ivory nails, and bark covered knuckles. The body that followed was half again larger than Tristan, putting the creature at nearly nine feet tall. Unlike the spriggons it was not lanky, it had tree trunk arms made of chorded vines coated in bark armor. The creature was articulated exactly like a human, though Tristan would not bet against every joint being double-jointed.

It struggled to get through the narrow doorway, the branches on its head and back getting in the way. Tristan frowned, had he set up a battleground to fight a powerful foe only to have his foe thwarted by its hair? Thankfully, the ent did not disappoint. It reached back and grabbed the growth on its back. With a tug, it ripped the foliage off.

The twigs and leaves in its grasp withered and died as the vitality was drained from them. Then the ent crouched sideways and stepped into the room. The fit was still close and it was pondering its prospects to crouch and move forward. So Tristan stabbed the ent in the chest when it was halfway through the door.